![\"In](\"https:\/\/wp-assets.futurism.com\/2019\/01\/new-horizons-ultima-thule-nasa-new-details-300x158.jpg\")
<\/div>Distant Flyby<\/h2>
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of the Kuiper Belt object known as Ultima Thule on Jan 1, making it the most distant object ever visited by a human spacecraft. New Horizons collected about 7 gigabytes of data during its brief flyby, including pictures, spectrometer readings, and radio signals.<\/p>
And now the first pieces of the puzzle are coming in.<\/p>
In a live stream<\/a>, NASA’s New Horizons<\/strong> spacecraft team revealed new details about Ultima Thule, a space rock that’s only 23 miles (37 kilometers) across, and floating some 4.1 billion miles (6.6 kilometers) away from Earth.<\/p> NASA scientists were puzzled by mysterious light signatures<\/a> of the oddly-shaped space rock, but new data collected by New Horizons gives us a much clearer look:<\/p> The New Horizons team also gave Ultima Thule the whimsical nickname “the Snowman,” and dubbed the two halves “Ultima” and “Thule.”<\/p> We don’t know much about why it’s this shape, but we can make some educated guesses: rotating cloud of small rocks could start to spin around each other, two of which could start getting closer and closer, until they finally touch — not colliding but slowly pressing into each other — forming a “bi-lobed object,” as NASA’s New Horizons Co-Investigator Jeff Moore put it.<\/p> “This coming together of lobes would be at an extremely slow speed,” Moore said. “It’d be about maybe one or a few miles an hour — the speed at which you might park your car at a parking space.”<\/p> So why all this excitement about a tiny space rock only 37 kilometers across? It could help us answer some of the most fundamental questions about the creation of the solar system.<\/p> “Think of New Horizons as time machine that has brought us back to the very beginning of the solar system, to a place where we can observe the most primordial building blocks of the planets,” Moore said.<\/p> THIS is #UltimaThule<\/a>. <\/p> The image taken by @NASANewHorizons<\/a> – shown in its original version (left) & sharpened version (on right) – is the most detailed image of the farthest object ever explored by a spacecraft. https:\/\/t.co\/gItPsMvbPC<\/a> @NASA<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/i7rDBURNrw<\/a><\/p> — Johns Hopkins APL (@JHUAPL) January 2, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote> READ MORE: <\/strong>New Horizons Successfully Explores Ultima Thule<\/a> [NASA] More on Ultima Thule: New Horizons Will Fly Past the Most Distant Object We’ve Ever Visited<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p> The post Here’s NASA’s Newly-Released Image of Ultima Thule<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p> View original post here: Distant Flyby NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of the Kuiper Belt object known as Ultima Thule\u00a0on Jan 1, making it the most distant object ever visited by a human\u00a0spacecraft. New Horizons collected about 7 gigabytes of data during its brief flyby, including pictures, spectrometer readings, and radio signals. And now the first pieces of the puzzle are coming in Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-assets.futurism.com\/2019\/01\/image.png\")
<\/p>The “Snowman”<\/h2>
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-assets.futurism.com\/2019\/01\/Screen-Shot-2019-01-02-at-2.18.45-PM.png\")
<\/p>Big Bang Time Machine<\/h2>
<\/strong><\/p>
Here’s NASA’s Newly-Released Image of Ultima Thule<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"