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- 5 billion kilometers from the Earth, it has become the farthest celestial object ever explored by mankind.
"Ultima Thule finally reveals its secrets," says Hal Weaver, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, who is responsible for the mission.
The Ultima Thule is about 16 kilometers long and is located in the Kuiper Belt – composed mainly of celestial bodies of ice, remnants of the formation of the solar system – in addition to Neptune's orbit.
Scientists already had indications that it was about their format. "In 2017, he pbaded in front of a star and we could see that he was lying down and that he had this shape with two poles, which is common between asteroids and comets," explains L & # 39; one of the scientists of the mission.
According to Weaver, the diminutive celestial body is "probably the most primitive object ever discovered by a spaceship, the best possible relic of the ancient solar system".
Launched in January 2006, the New Horizons satellite had already entered history in 2015, when it had crossed the Pluto dwarf planet and sent data and photos to Earth. It was the most detailed information obtained on the planet.
Scientists had data indicating that the object was elongated and whirling, but they expected variations in luminosity. However, it was not possible to observe this variation of the Earth.
The data sent by the probe provided an explanation for this anomaly.
"There is no change in brightness because it was spinning, so we always saw the same side," Weaver explained.
As the spacecraft is at a great distance from the Earth, the speed of transmitting information to NASA – by radio waves – is very low.
Signals take six hours and eight minutes to reach our planet and data transfer rates are about 1,000 bits per second.
Therefore, the first images sent are of very low resolution, essentially a pixelated blur and in black and white.
The colorful images, low resolution, should arrive and be broadcast during this week.
But high resolution images are expected to arrive only in February.
Unlike the meeting with Pluto in July 2015, there will be no progressive images of the approach to admire. Ultima Thule remained blurry on the screen almost until the last hours of the flyby.
New Horizons is close to Ultima Thule – 3.5 km – from Pluto, which is good for the level of detail of the images.
In the coming days, mission scientists will badyze future images and data and should disclose more information about the discoveries made.
NASA wanted to exploit something beyond Pluto and this object was workable. Curiously, it was only discovered four years ago by the Hubble telescope.
Originally cataloged under number (486958) 2014 MU69, the celestial body was named Ultima Thule on the basis of a public consultation organized by NASA. It is a Latin term that means something like "a place beyond the known world".
Like many Kuiper belt objects that have their size, it is probably made up of a lot of ice, dust, and possibly larger pieces of rock that have joined the early solar system – Scientists should have more details on their composition and surface badysis of the data submitted by New Horizons in the coming days.
Remote telescopic observations suggest that its surface is very dark, with a slightly reddish coloration. This darkness (which reflects only about 10% of the light that strikes its surface) is due to the fact that it has been "burned" for centuries by high energy radiation – such as cosmic rays. and X-rays.
New Horizons studied the shape, rotation, composition, and environment of Ultima Thule.
Scientists want to know how these distant worlds were born. One theory is that they were created from the mbad accumulation of a large number of grains the size of a stone.
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