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<\/a>Nasa’s New Horizons: ‘Snowman’ shape of distant Ultima Thule revealed<\/h1>\nBy Jonathan Amos<\/span> BBC Science Correspondent<\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n- \n2 January 2019<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
(Read full article with lots of images here<\/a>)
<\/span><\/h4>\nThe small, icy world known as Ultima Thule has finally been revealed.<\/p>\n
A new picture returned from Nasa’s New Horizons<\/a> spacecraft shows it to be two objects joined together – to give a look like a “snowman”.<\/p>\nThe US probe’s images acquired as it approached Ultima hinted at the possibility of a double body, but the first detailed picture from Tuesday’s close flyby confirms it.<\/p>\n
New Horizons encountered Ultima 6.5 billion km from Earth.<\/p>\n
The event set a record for the most distant ever exploration of a Solar System object. The previous mark was also set by New Horizons when it flew past the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015.<\/p>\n
NASA’s outward-bound explorer rings in the new year with the most distant flyby in space-exploration history.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n![\"New](\"https:\/\/s22380.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/New-Horizons-trajectory.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHaving visited Pluto and the small Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69<\/sub>, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is headed out of the solar system.
\nNASA \/ JHU-APL \/ SwRI<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\nIn the frigid, silent depths of the Kuiper Belt, the New Horizons spacecraft successfully flew past a tiny world nicknamed “Ultima Thule” (UL-ti-muh TOO-lee<\/em>), meaning “beyond the known world,” in the first hours of 2019. (Its official designation is 2014 MU69<\/sub>.) The highly anticipated flyby, at 5:33 Universal Time today, came 3\u00bd years after the spacecraft’s historic encounter with Pluto on July 14, 2015, and occurred some 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion km) from Earth \u2014 the most distant object ever visited at close range.<\/p>\n![\"New](\"https:\/\/s22380.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/New-Hoirizons-and-MU69-artwork.jpg\")
<\/p>\nArtistic portrayal of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft cruising by 2014 MU69<\/sub> on January 1, 2019.
\nSteve Gribben \/ NASA \/ JHU-APL \/ SwRI<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\nMore than that, the observations from New Horizons’ seven experiments<\/a>, now safely stashed on the craft’s solid-state recorders, promise to reveal secrets of the “Third Zone” of the Sun’s realm \u2014 distant objects that have remained frozen in time since the formation of our solar system’s formation 4\u00bd billion years ago.<\/p>\nConfirmation of the flyby’s success didn’t reach the mission’s control center \u2014 Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL) in Laurel, Maryland \u2014 for 10 hours. That’s because the spacecraft remained out of contact as it scrutinized its target and because its telemetry now takes 6 hours to reach Earth. “We have a healthy spacecraft,” announced mission manager Alice Bowman.<\/p>\n
Once this “phone home” status report reached the ground, hundreds of anxious mission scientists, news media, and others erupted with applause. “I can’t promise you success,” principal investigator Alan Stern had warned the day before. “We are straining the capabilities of this spacecraft.”<\/p>\n
READ MORE<\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\nChina lunar rover successfully touches down on far side of the moon<\/h1>\n\nBeijing (CNN)<\/cite>In an historic first, China has successfully landed a rover on the far side of the moon, Chinese state media announced Thursday, a huge milestone for the nation as it attempts to position itself as a leading space power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nChina’s National Space Administration (CNSA) landed the craft, officially named Chang’e 4<\/a>, at 10:26 am Beijing time on Thursday, in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the moon’s largest and oldest impact crater, China Central Television (CCTV) reported.<\/div>\nIt made its final descent from an elliptical orbit 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) above the moon’s surface, making a “smooth” and “precise” landing, according to the general designer of Chang’e 4, Sun Zezhou, who added the probe pulled off a “bulls-eye.”<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/cdn.cnn.com\/cnnnext\/dam\/assets\/190103150840-01-china-moon-landing-exlarge-169.jpg\")
The first image of the moon’s far side taken after the Chang’e 4 probe landed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nState media reported the rover transmitted back the world’s first close range image of the far side of the moon. Six hours after touchdown, the rover will descend from the lander onto the moon’s surface, mission spokesman Yu Guobin told CCTV.<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe far side of the moon is the hemisphere that never faces earth, due to the moon’s rotation. It is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the “dark side of the moon,” even though it receives just as much sunlight as its earth-facing side.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nREAD MORE<\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n\u00a0OSIRIS-REx orbits asteroid Bennu<\/h3>\nDecember 31, 2018 –<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.asteroidmission.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Orbital-A-Beauty-Shot-1024x576.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOn Dec. 31, 2018, NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft went into orbit around asteroid Bennu for the first time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At 2:43 p.m. EST on December 31, while many on Earth prepared to welcome the New Year, NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, 70 million miles (110 million kilometers) away, carried out a single, eight-second burn of its thrusters \u2013 and broke a space exploration record. The spacecraft entered into orbit around the asteroid Bennu, and made Bennu the smallest object ever to be orbited<\/a> by a spacecraft.<\/p>\n\u201cThe team continued our long string of successes by executing the orbit-insertion maneuver perfectly,\u201d said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. \u201cWith the navigation campaign coming to an end, we are looking forward to the scientific mapping and sample site selection phase of the mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lauretta, along with his team, spent the last day of 2018 with his feet planted on Earth, but his mind focused on space. \u201cEntering orbit around Bennu is an amazing accomplishment that our team has been planning for years,\u201d Lauretta said.<\/p>\n
Inching around the asteroid at a snail\u2019s pace, OSIRIS-REx\u2019s first orbit marks a leap for humankind. Never before has a spacecraft from Earth circled so close to such a small space object \u2013 one with barely enough gravity to keep a vehicle in a stable orbit.<\/p>\n
READ MORE<\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n <\/p>\n
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- \n2 January 2019<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
(Read full article with lots of images here<\/a>)
<\/span><\/h4>\nThe small, icy world known as Ultima Thule has finally been revealed.<\/p>\n
A new picture returned from Nasa’s New Horizons<\/a> spacecraft shows it to be two objects joined together – to give a look like a “snowman”.<\/p>\n
The US probe’s images acquired as it approached Ultima hinted at the possibility of a double body, but the first detailed picture from Tuesday’s close flyby confirms it.<\/p>\n
New Horizons encountered Ultima 6.5 billion km from Earth.<\/p>\n
The event set a record for the most distant ever exploration of a Solar System object. The previous mark was also set by New Horizons when it flew past the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015.<\/p>\n
NASA’s outward-bound explorer rings in the new year with the most distant flyby in space-exploration history.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\nHaving visited Pluto and the small Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69<\/sub>, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is headed out of the solar system.
\nNASA \/ JHU-APL \/ SwRI<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\nIn the frigid, silent depths of the Kuiper Belt, the New Horizons spacecraft successfully flew past a tiny world nicknamed “Ultima Thule” (UL-ti-muh TOO-lee<\/em>), meaning “beyond the known world,” in the first hours of 2019. (Its official designation is 2014 MU69<\/sub>.) The highly anticipated flyby, at 5:33 Universal Time today, came 3\u00bd years after the spacecraft’s historic encounter with Pluto on July 14, 2015, and occurred some 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion km) from Earth \u2014 the most distant object ever visited at close range.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nArtistic portrayal of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft cruising by 2014 MU69<\/sub> on January 1, 2019.
\nSteve Gribben \/ NASA \/ JHU-APL \/ SwRI<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\nMore than that, the observations from New Horizons’ seven experiments<\/a>, now safely stashed on the craft’s solid-state recorders, promise to reveal secrets of the “Third Zone” of the Sun’s realm \u2014 distant objects that have remained frozen in time since the formation of our solar system’s formation 4\u00bd billion years ago.<\/p>\n
Confirmation of the flyby’s success didn’t reach the mission’s control center \u2014 Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL) in Laurel, Maryland \u2014 for 10 hours. That’s because the spacecraft remained out of contact as it scrutinized its target and because its telemetry now takes 6 hours to reach Earth. “We have a healthy spacecraft,” announced mission manager Alice Bowman.<\/p>\n
Once this “phone home” status report reached the ground, hundreds of anxious mission scientists, news media, and others erupted with applause. “I can’t promise you success,” principal investigator Alan Stern had warned the day before. “We are straining the capabilities of this spacecraft.”<\/p>\n
READ MORE<\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
China lunar rover successfully touches down on far side of the moon<\/h1>\n
\nBeijing (CNN)<\/cite>In an historic first, China has successfully landed a rover on the far side of the moon, Chinese state media announced Thursday, a huge milestone for the nation as it attempts to position itself as a leading space power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
China’s National Space Administration (CNSA) landed the craft, officially named Chang’e 4<\/a>, at 10:26 am Beijing time on Thursday, in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the moon’s largest and oldest impact crater, China Central Television (CCTV) reported.<\/div>\nIt made its final descent from an elliptical orbit 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) above the moon’s surface, making a “smooth” and “precise” landing, according to the general designer of Chang’e 4, Sun Zezhou, who added the probe pulled off a “bulls-eye.”<\/div>\n\n\n\nThe first image of the moon’s far side taken after the Chang’e 4 probe landed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n State media reported the rover transmitted back the world’s first close range image of the far side of the moon. Six hours after touchdown, the rover will descend from the lander onto the moon’s surface, mission spokesman Yu Guobin told CCTV.<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe far side of the moon is the hemisphere that never faces earth, due to the moon’s rotation. It is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the “dark side of the moon,” even though it receives just as much sunlight as its earth-facing side.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nREAD MORE<\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n
\u00a0OSIRIS-REx orbits asteroid Bennu<\/h3>\n
December 31, 2018 –<\/div>\n<\/a><\/p>\nOn Dec. 31, 2018, NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft went into orbit around asteroid Bennu for the first time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At 2:43 p.m. EST on December 31, while many on Earth prepared to welcome the New Year, NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, 70 million miles (110 million kilometers) away, carried out a single, eight-second burn of its thrusters \u2013 and broke a space exploration record. The spacecraft entered into orbit around the asteroid Bennu, and made Bennu the smallest object ever to be orbited<\/a> by a spacecraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team continued our long string of successes by executing the orbit-insertion maneuver perfectly,\u201d said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. \u201cWith the navigation campaign coming to an end, we are looking forward to the scientific mapping and sample site selection phase of the mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lauretta, along with his team, spent the last day of 2018 with his feet planted on Earth, but his mind focused on space. \u201cEntering orbit around Bennu is an amazing accomplishment that our team has been planning for years,\u201d Lauretta said.<\/p>\n
Inching around the asteroid at a snail\u2019s pace, OSIRIS-REx\u2019s first orbit marks a leap for humankind. Never before has a spacecraft from Earth circled so close to such a small space object \u2013 one with barely enough gravity to keep a vehicle in a stable orbit.<\/p>\n
READ MORE<\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n
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