NASA's probe sends its first signals from the edge of our solar system

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

The nuclear-powered spacecraft traveled 6.4 billion kilometers, reaching 3540 kilometers of the 32-kilometer Altima Toli rock, swimming in the heart of the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is a ring of frozen celestial bodies 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 Eastern Time. (1528 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.

"Last night's evening, the American New Horizons spacecraft has conducted the longest exploration of the history of humanity," said Alan Stern, senior investigator of the Johns Hopkins Lab at Laurel.

Stern said that a photo of my appointment, sent last night, did not give more details than the previous photos, even darker, whether or not they hold a single stone resembling a peanut asymmetrical or that they sway to each other. .

And when he approached Pluto in 2015. The probe discovered that Pluto was slightly larger than expected. In March, he discovered methane-rich dunes on the surface of Pluto.

Now that it has traveled 1.6 billion kilometers after Pluto in the Kuiper belt during its second mission, the probe will study for months the composition of the atmosphere and terrain of the Altima in search of solutions for 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 have been monitoring the Altima with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope and have chosen 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 NASA probes launched in 1977, the Voyager 1 and the Voyager 2, explored the depths of space and then went further in order to study objects outside the group. And their mission is not over yet.