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STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION
Thirteen years outbound Earth and a trillion miles past Pluto, NASA's New Horizons Probe is healthy and on the road to a new year. project scientists say.
Unofficially dubbed Ultima Thule (pronounced TOO-lee) in a NASA naming contest, the small 20-mile-wide body is one of countless denizens of the vast Kuiper Belt extending beyond the orbit of Pluto, taking 296 years to complete the trip. sun. New Horizons is the first spacecraft to target a Kuiper Belt object, passing within 2,170 miles of Ultima Thule on Jan. 1.
"Ultima Thule comes from Latin and it means 'beyond the farthest frontiers,' which is exactly what we're doing," said Alan Stern, the New Horizon's principal investigator. "We're making the farthest exploration of worlds in the history of space exploration. The spacecraft is now about a billion miles farther out than Pluto, which itself has been farthest world ever explored. "
At Ultima Thule's distance of 4 billion miles from the sun – 43 times farther than Earth – it will take radio signals carrying high-resolution pictures, spectroscopic data and other priceless information, traveling at 186,000 miles every second, six hours seven minutes and 58 seconds to cross the gulf to Earth.
Given the enormous distance and the spacecraft's 30-watt radio transmitter, it will take 20 months to beam the treasure of data collected before, during and after the flyby. But a sampling of high-resolution images is expected to be collected at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory at the Evening of Jan. 1 and the morning of Jan. 2.
"Stern told reporters Wednesday at the American Astronomical Society's Planetary Sciences Division meeting in Knoxville, Tenn.
"We are going to an entirely new type of world, something that is much more important than anything else we have ever had in this world of deep solar system formation," he said.
Said Carey Smooth, a New Horizons Science Team collaborator at the Applied Physics Laboratory: "If New Horizons" (Pluto) flyby has been teaching anything, expectations are not reality. We got totally surprised at Pluto, we're going to get surprised again. "
"Ultima Thule could be heavily cratered, highly pitted or it could even be smooth from ancient flows and ancient activity," he said. "We do not know. We are not going to know until we get there in January. I'm waiting to be surprised. "
Launched in January 2006, New Horizons flew past Jupiter in February 2007, using the giant planet's gravity to fling it onto a fast-track trajectory to Pluto. Even so, it took another eight years to reach its target in July 2015, flying past at a distance of 7,800 miles to collect the first close-up pictures of the famously demoted dwarf planet.
Hubble Space Hubble Space Telescope to the future of the future.
Ultima Thule was discovered by Hubble in 2014 and after the Pluto encounter, NASA managers approved a mission extension and New Horizons' course was adjusted to set up the Jan. 1 flyby.
Based on occultation observations in which Ultima Thule passed in front of a star background, scientists believe the target is either bi-lobed or elongated. New Horizons first "saw" its quarry on Aug. 16, at a distance of more than 100 million miles, but it is so much smaller than Pluto it appeared as a barely distinguishable pinpoint of light.
It will not be much more than until New Year's Eve.
"When we were 10 weeks out of Pluto, we could not find more space," Stern said. "Ultima Goal 10 weeks out is just a dot in the distance. And it will remain as a dowry in the distance until we start to resolve it.
"By the day after the flyby, we'll have high resolution images, we hope even higher resolution than the best images of Pluto. So it's going to be quick. "
During the spacecraft's approach, scientists will use its cameras to scan the area. Ultima Thule – the official name is 2014 MU69 – to look for any signs of dust, moonlets, rings or other possible hazards that might pose a danger to New Horizons. Flight planners can travel the spacecraft with an engine firing as late as mid December, moving the aim point farther away if required.
"There's some danger and some suspense because we do not know in detail what the hazard environment might be," Stern said. "Our spacecraft is traveling at 32,000 miles an hour, that's about 10 miles per second almost, and a collision with the smallest shard would probably be fatal to the spacecraft. We're conducting a random watch using the on-board telescopes and cameras and we're preparing them for the near future. "
New Horizons is equipped with a sophisticated infrared spectral imager, an ultraviolet spectral imager, a high-resolution camera and sensors to detect electrically charged solar particles, high-energy particles and dust. Its radio and high-gain antenna are also used for radio science investigations.
If all goes well, New Horizons will map the body's geology, surface color and composition, search for signs of ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane and water, search for satellites and / or rings and look for any signs of cometary coma-like features .
Regardless of what it finds, New Horizons' flyby of Ultima Thule "is going to be historic."
"The New Year's going to bring us some new knowledge from the edge of our solar system," Stern said. NASA does best, which is to explore. There is one thing you can say about Ultima for sure, it's far out. "
The same day Stern was outlining the road ahead for New Horizons, a Southwest Research Institute team prepared a preliminary report demonstrating the feasibility of an electric-propulsion spacecraft designed to orbit Pluto, using the gravity of its wide moon and eventually fling it out into the Kuiper Belt.
The spacecraft would use the Pluto's furnace for smaller and smaller plots for close-up observations and even the dwarf planet's tenuous atmosphere during low-altitude passes.
"This tour is far from optimized, yet it is capable of making Pluto's four small moons, while examining Pluto's polar and equatorial regions by plane changes," said Tiffany Finley, who designed the orbital tour. "The plan also allows for an extended up-close encounter with Charon before dipping into the Kuiper Belt for new assignments."
Stern, a staunch supporter of the Pluto-is-a-planet school of thought, said the Southwest Research Institute's study of single spacecraft can both explore the Pluto system in more detail and carry out multiple observations in the Kuiper Belt.
"Who would have thought that a single mission could already be provided?" Stern said in a statement describing the mission's feasibility. "Now that our team has shown that the planetary science community does not want to choose between a Kuiper Belt and Kuiper Belt exploration. "
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