In an incredible world-first, NASA has released an image from a historic flyby of Ultima Thule, a bowling pin-shaped celestial object at the edge of our solar system some 6 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away.
The New Horizons spacecraft flew past Ultima from the Kuiper Belt in the early hours of New Year’s Day, making it the “farthest exploration of any world in history – 4 billion miles from the Sun,” said the project’s principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
“The data we have look fantastic and we’re already learning about Ultima from up close. From here out the data will just get better and better,” Stern added.
