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The probe New Horizons space tjiriet successfully on Ultima Thule, the most celestial body ever visited. His meeting with & # 39; this item in the outskirts of the solar system occurred at the beginning of & # 39; midnight of 31 & # 39; December. A few hours after the historic maneuver, the ship sent its first signals, which took six hours to travel at the speed of light over 6,600 million kilometers separating it from Earth. Finally, the message received from the antenna of NASA deep space outside Madrid on Tuesday, 1 January, afternoon.
"The probe is f & # 39; perfect condition. We just got the most distant flyby most," said Alice Bowman, head of mission operations, among applause and cries & # 39; ġubilazzjoni in Applied Physics Laboratory at the University & # 39; Johns Hopkins, USA, where the center of & # 39; control. Now the scientific data will start arriving "to understand the origin of our solar system," he added.
Ultima Thule is a world & # 39; small size, the oldest and most visited one space probe. This extended object discovered in 2014 is one of thousands of & # 39; asteroids and comet billion up to form the Kuiper belt.
The ship of Nasa – the fastest ever launched into space – Ultima undergone at 18 kilometers per second, sit & # 39; to & # 39; each taking its cameras tried to show the geographical features of & # 39; this body from a distance & # 39; about 2,000 kilometers, three times closer to what happened on Pluto, spectacular views. Thanks to this mission, the dwarf planet ceased to be a little fuzzy ball observed by telescopes and became a complex world with glaciers, water and organic compounds which can & # 39; there is an ocean under the ice.
The latest available images, taken during the approach to Ultima, showing extended body, shaped like bolus, "35 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide & # 39 ;," explained Alan Stern, head scientist of the mission, at a conference picture afternoon Stern explained that is not yet known whether a single body with & # 39; two lobes or two separate items.
The team is expected to receive the first images of the flyby last night, process them and publish them tomorrow. The probe took about 900 of their meeting images and sent them to Earth for the next two years, as described in Bowman tweet, which is the first woman to occupy the post & # 39; head & # 39; operations & # 39; & # 39 space mission in; John Hopkins. Pictures & # 39; higher resolution will arrive in February.
A few hours after the flyby, New Horizons had already nearly half a million kilometers from the small world of newly discovered and were more in Kuiper belt, where it is possible to visit at least another asteroid in the coming years.
Ultima Thule is a time capsule. It is made from the original material which the Solar System began to form more than 4,000 million years ago and little has been modified since then. Their study can & # 39; clarify the origin of our star system and clarify the role of these Kuiper belt bodies are in the direction of kometti from their trajectories and bringing them closer to the heart solar system, a process that can & # 39; extending the life on our planet through impacts of these bodies, as explained to this newspaper Adriana Ocampo, one of those responsible for the mission.
A few hours before, another space craft from NASA, Osiris-Rex, also made history as he entered orbit & # 39; the Bennu asteroid, about 110 million kilometers from our planet, according to Nasa at 31 & # 39 ; December. The probe became the first orbit to orbit a small object as this one, b & # 39; diameter & # 39; 500 m.
It will also be the establishment of the closest orbit to a height of & # 39; & # 39 flight; and only half a kilometer. Your ultimate goal will be to stop-over on the face, suck sample & # 39; land and return it to Earth in 2023. This body is particularly interesting because it has a small chance of hitting Earth (0.037%).
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