Video: New Horizons animation

Using high-fidelity modeling and image analysis to resolve Pluto’s exact shape, scientists examining pictures from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft said Monday they have confirmed Pluto is the largest known object in a frozen outer zone of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt.

Watch as the New Horizons team hold a press conference an hour after they received confirmation that the spacecraft had successfully flown by Ultima Thule and had recorded the expected amount of science data.

New Horizons’s mission operations manager Alice Bowman previews the spacecraft’s New Year’s Day encounter with Ultima Thule in the Kuiper Belt, a distant zone of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune.