NASA's probe approaches a rock of space in a historic mission

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A probe launched by the US space agency NASA reached the other end of the solar system early Tuesday morning and flies over a space rock 20 miles long, billions of kilometers from Earth. have announced scientists. Solar system.

The New Horizons probe is expected to reach the third zone within the Kuiper Belt at 12:33 pm EST. Scientists will only get confirmation of his successful arrival when the spacecraft sent data to its location via NASA's deep space network at 10:28 am EST, about 10 hours later.

Once the probe has penetrated the outer layer of the belt containing frozen objects and debris to form the solar system, it will for the first time examine the Altima Thule, a large bean-shaped block.

Scientists say that they had not discovered any new Altima at the launch of the probe, which made its mission unique. In 2014, astronomers spotted Altima Thole using space telescope Hubble and have chosen to be part of the New Horizons mission started in 2015.

"Everything is possible in this very unknown region," John Spencer, a New Horizons scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, told reporters on Monday.

The New Horizons were launched in January 2006 to reduce the icy limbs of the solar system by four billion kilometers to study Pluto and its five moons.

Approaching Pluto in 2015, the probe discovered that Pluto was slightly larger than expected. In March, dunes rich in methane were discovered on the surface of Pluto.

The probe has been cut one billion kilometers behind Pluto towards the Kuiper belt and is now seeking information on the origin of the solar system and its planets.

The probe will fly 3,500 kilometers from the surface of the Altima Thuly mass, and scientists hope to know the chemical composition of their atmosphere and their topography as part of a mission. According to NASA, it will be the closest surveillance of a body to this extreme dimension of the Earth.

Although the New Horizons mission represents the closest approach to an object of this dimension in our solar system, two NASA probes in 1977, the Voyager 1 and the Voyager 2, to explore the 39, deep space, went even further in a mission to study objects outside the group. And their mission is not over yet.