2014 MU69 – Page 2 – Spaceflight Now

On eve of New Horizons flyby, Ultima Thule still holding onto its mysteries

December 30, 2018

A day before NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft closes in on a frozen outpost nicknamed Ultima Thule 4.1 billion miles from Earth, basic facts about the city-sized object continued to elude scientists Sunday as the ground team braced for a deluge of data and imagery that should unmask the unexplored world at the frontier of the solar system.

Video: Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager, previews Ultima Thule flyby (members only)

December 30, 2018

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.

Live coverage: New Horizons flyby target comes into focus

December 30, 2018

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made a historic New Year’s encounter with an object nicknamed Ultima Thule in the Kuiper Belt a billion miles beyond Pluto. The NASA space probe passed Ultima Thule at a distance of around 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) on Jan. 1, making it the most distant planetary body ever explored up close.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft heads for New Year’s encounter with distant world

December 28, 2018

Three years and a billion miles past Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons probe is on the verge of at least one more pioneering, once-in-a-lifetime milestone: a New Year’s Day flyby of a small body known as 2014 MU69, unofficially dubbed Ultima Thule — “beyond the known world” — in a NASA naming contest.

New Horizons on track for historic New Year’s Day flyby of Ultima Thule

October 28, 2018

Thirteen years outbound from Earth and a billion miles past Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons probe is healthy and on course for a historic New Year’s Day flyby of its next target, a frozen remnant left over from the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, project scientists say.

Two NASA probes catch first glimpses of primordial targets

August 29, 2018

Two NASA spacecraft — the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission and the New Horizons probe at the edge of the solar system — have captured their first looks at their targets as they approach a pair of primordial relics for the first time.

NASA’s New Horizons probe wakes up for New Year’s Day flyby

June 5, 2018

Speeding through the outer reaches of the solar system nearly 3.8 billion miles from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has awakened from a five-and-a-half month slumber, ready for a second act after its 2015 flyby of Pluto with a New Year’s Day encounter with a primordial world set to become the most distant object ever explored.

New Horizons spacecraft’s next distant destination gets a nickname

March 14, 2018

The frozen faraway miniature world targeted for a high-speed flyby by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on Jan. 1, 2019, now has a nickname: Ultima Thule.

Plot thickens as New Horizons moves within year of next flyby

January 6, 2018

The final days before NASA’s New Horizons probe barrels in on its next destination on Jan. 1, 2019, should prove eventful, with scientists trying to sort out whether a distant mini-world detected by the Hubble Space Telescope more than three years ago may actually be a swarm of icy objects.

Scientists firm up flyby plan for New Horizons’s next destination

September 21, 2017

Now more than two years outbound from its historic encounter with Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is on target for a fleeting flyby less than 2,200 miles from 2014 MU69, an icy, city-sized world set to become the most distant object ever visited, just after midnight Jan. 1, 2019, on the U.S. East Coast. Scientists now say the probe may be able to pursue another destination some time in the 2020s.