New Horizons probe transmits its first image of the New World

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 2 (UPI) – NASA scientists Wednesday released the first detailed image of the most distant asteroid discovered by Ultima Thol in the Kiber Belt region.

The New Horizon spacecraft made its final flight at 00:33 (0533 GMT) on New Year's Day, approaching Oltima Thul, about 3540 km from its surface at about 50,694 km. The weather.

NASA said the new 17,000-mile (27,000-km) footage revealed that Oltima Thul's "two contacts" consisted of two connected areas at a distance of 31 km one from the other. ;other. 19 km) and the smaller Thul area (14 km).

The team said that the two fields had joined 99% of the vehicles earlier than planned on the way back to the formation of the solar system and they did not collide faster than two cars in an accident minor.

The appearance of Ultima Thol, unlike anything humans have seen before, illuminates the processes that built the planets four and a half billion years ago, NASA announced.

"The probe, like the time machine, brings us back to the birth of the solar system and we are witnessing the physical representation of the beginning of planet formation," said Geoff Moore, New Horizons Geology and Geophysics leader.

"The Ultima Thule study helps us understand how planets are formed, both in our solar system and those in orbit around other stars in our galaxy," he said.

New Year flight data will continue to arrive in the coming weeks and months with more high-resolution images, NASA said.

"In the coming months, New Horizons will be releasing dozens of data sets to Earth and we will be writing new chapters in Ultima Thule's history and the solar system," said Helen Winter, Project Manager for New Horizons.

Ultima Thol, about 6 billion kilometers from the sun and 1.6 billion kilometers from Pluto, was the farthest asteroid to be explored, according to NASA.