[ad_1]
NASA's New Horizons unmanned spacecraft prepares for a historic New Year flight beyond the most distant object studied nearby. The asteroid is located about 6.4 billion kilometers from the Earth.
This space object, called Ultima Thule, is about the same size as the American capital, Washington, and moves into orbit in the cold and cold Koiper Belt. at a distance of about 1.5 billion kilometers from Pluto.
To read also: Detection of the object farthest from the Sun
The maximum approach of the aircraft with a space rock will take place on January 1 at 17:33 GMT (19:33 hrs Kiev).
The camera embedded in the probe New Horizons already aims at the installation t Ultima Thule, so that scientists can get a better idea of its shape, as well as whether it is the only object or in several distinct parts.
On December 26, the New Horizons device switched to "meeting mode". "And it is now in perfect condition."
The New Horizons probe signal, indicating a successful flight by the Kuiper Belt object at a distance of 3,500 km, is expected to be captured on January 1 at 15:29 GMT (17:29 in Kiev) sometimes.)
The famous American science promoter Bill Will congratulated everyone for this remarkable event and stressed that we will soon learn a lot about Ultima Thule and our solar system.
What is Ultima Thule? This is the farthest object from the solar system at which the automatic station was visited.The astronomical observations made last year indicate that Ultima Thule is likely to feature an irregularly shaped fragment of a diameter of 30 to 40 km, or several asteroids of 20 km in diameter each.
What is New Horizons? This station, launched January 19, 200 6 with the Atlas V launcher from the Cape Canaveral, Florida launch site. In April 2006, the probe crossed the orbit of Mars in February 2007, performed a gravitational maneuver in the vicinity of Jupiter, flew over Saturn in June 2008, in March 2011, crossed the orbit of Uranus and in July 2011 it was 12,500 miles from Pluto.
More information on the events of the world of technology, gadgets, artificial intelligence and space, read in the Techno section
Source link
