NASA manages to reach "the most remote area ever explored by humans" (video)

01:19 02.01.2019(Updated 01:40 02.01.2019) Copy link

NASA's New Horizons hit the ground Tuesday after a trip to the most remote area ever explored by humans – a frozen rock at the edge of the solar system – whose scientists hope to reveal the secrets of the group's origins.

The nuclear-powered spacecraft cut 6.4 billion kilometers between 3,540 kilometers of the 32-kilometer Altima Toli rock that swims in the heart of the Kuiper Belt. According to Reuters, the Kuiper Belt is a ring of frozen celestial objects coming directly out of the orbit of Neptune.

Engineers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland applauded when the first signals sent by the spacecraft via NASA's deep space network arrived at 10:28 am EDT (3:28 pm GMT).

"We have a very good spacecraft," said Alice Bauman, mission operations manager.
NASA said the vehicle would send more images and data of space in the coming days.

The probe, New Horizons, was launched in January 2006 to reduce the solar system by 6.4 billion kilometers and study Pluto and its five moons.

Alan Stern, lead investigator of the probe, said at a press conference at the Johns Hopkins Laboratory in Laurel:

Last night, the American spacecraft New Horizons led the longest exploration of human history and performed it dramatically.

Stern said that a photo of my appointment, sent last night and not containing more details about the previous photos, adds to the mystery of whether it's an accident. rock resembling an asymmetrical peanut or actually a rock around each other. "Their photo is confused because of their proximity."

Approaching Pluto in 2015, the probe discovered that Pluto was a little larger than expected, and in March, methane-rich dunes were discovered on the surface of Pluto.

Now that he has traveled 1.6 billion kilometers after the Kuiper Belt in his second mission, the probe will study for months the composition of the atmosphere and the topography of the Altima looking for solutions to solve the mystery of the composition of the solar system and its planets.

NASA said scientists had not discovered Altima during the launch of the probe, which makes its mission unique. In 2014, astronomers monitored Altima using the Hubble Space Telescope and chose the following year for the next New Horizons mission.

The probe flying 3,540 kilometers from the surface of the Altima Toli, scientists hope to know the chemical composition of their atmosphere and their terrain during a mission. According to NASA, it will be the closest surveillance of a body in this extreme dimension of the Earth.

Although the New Horizons mission represents the closest approach to an object of this size in our solar system, two probes launched by NASA in 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, have explored the planet. deep space and have reached greater distances in a mission of object study Outside the solar system, their mission is not yet complete.