NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Captures Its First Photo of Ultima Thule, Its Next Target

I love it! Seeing Pluto close up was a real blast, and now that little craft will be zipping by this next Kuiper Belt object on Jan 1.

https://gizmodo.com/nasa-s-new-horizons-spacecraft-captures-its-first-photo-1828680220



Though it’s still 107 million miles from its target, the New Horizons spacecraft has caught a first glimpse of Ultima Thule, a mysterious Kuiper Belt object.

With Pluto now firmly in its rearview mirror, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is steadily chugging towards Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object located, on average, about 44 AU from the Sun (one AU is the average distance of the Earth to the Sun). By comparison, Pluto’s orbit is around 33.63 AU.

On August 16, and at a distance of 107 million miles from Ultima Thule, New Horizons used its telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) to snap four dozen images. The data was transmitted back to Earth, where NASA scientists, to their delight, managed to create a composite image and discern the dim object from all the background noise produced by stars. Happily, the location of Ultimate Thule, or (48695 2014 MU69 as it’s officially known, was exactly where NASA scientists had predicted. That means New Horizons is right on track.



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What's it a photo of? It doesn't look like a photo of anything to me? Or is it out of focus?

 

Being so far away, it is still little more than a point of light in the probe's camera. Not sure how soon we can expect anything truly impressive, but I suppose that will be on or after the date it makes its close pass, which is Jan 1, 2019.

 

I can't wait!

 

Bullshit. ... not see anything.
Let the Americans first tell why the entire lunar soil, which is sold on Earth, was delivered by Soviet lunar stations, and not by American astronauts who were "on the moon"

 

The Mermaid Unicorn soldier Aliens made a left turn instead of a right and delivered the sound stage lunar dust to Russia before falling off the edge of the Earth.

 

The actor Apmstrong wrote in diapers and cheerfully out of the barrel, which was thrown into the ocean

 

Yet the Ancient Alien cronographers of Atlantis foretold the Great Neiling in Mayan Prophecy Crystal Skull computer language, encoded in Yeti DNA.

 

We have a Conspiracy Theory subforum. This is the Science subforum.

Shoo.

 

Your Russian is showing.

 

Who cares? Human beings--regardless of nationality--went to the Moon; walked on the Moon; and designed & launched the mechanical devices that went to the Moon, ALL for the first time in human history. Be proud to have been a part of that history. Mankind leaving its cradle. That's more important than the deplorable political & nationalist BS.