A major scientific discovery has recently been made. The New Horizons spacecraft has finally flown past Ultima Thule, the farthest and oldest (known till date) cosmic body that has ever been observed by a space craft. The Ultima Thule was discovered via telescope in 2014.
Before this, the only image scientists had was a hazy one that highlighted Ultima’s oblong shape.
However, this clear image made them confirm the shape with confidence. The body was formed when two spheres, or lobes, slowly gravitated towards each other until they stuck together.
“That image is so 2018… Meet Ultima Thule!” said lead investigator Alan Stern. The image was taken at a distance of approx. 17,000 miles (about 27,000 kilometres) with a resolution of 140 meters per pixel.
“That bowling pin is gone — it’s a snowman if anything at all,” Stern said during a NASA briefing.
“What this spacecraft and this team accomplished is unprecedented.”
Sun’s rays are 1,600 times fainter here than on Earth.The body is roughly 19 miles long and completes rotation in about 15 hours. NASA dubbed the larger lobe Ultima, and the other, which is about three times smaller, Thule.
“This is the first object that we can clearly tell was born this way” Stern said, instead of evolving as a sort of “bi-lobe.”
“This really puts the nail on the coffin now. We know that this is how these kinds of objects in many cases form.”
– ‘A time machine’ –
Some 4.5 billion years ago a cloud of frozen pebbles began to join forces, gradually forming two bodies — Ultima and Thule. The lobes, according to Moore, are really just “resting on each other.”
“New Horizons is like a time machine, taking us back to the birth of the solar system,” Moore said. “We are seeing a physical representation of the beginning of planetary formation, frozen in time.”
Carly Howett, another researcher of the mission, noted that “we can definitely say that Ultima Thule is red,” perhaps due to irradiation of ice.
NASA may come up with fresh announcements soon, with more images and details about the faraway cosmic body.