Login With Google
Ultima Thule
Why is it in news?
- A NASA spaceship is zooming toward the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever photographed by humankind.
- A tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule some four billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away.
- Ultima Thule will be the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft.
More in news
- The US space agency will ring in the New Year with a live online broadcast to mark historic flyby of the mysterious object in a dark and frigid region of space known as the Kuiper Belt.
- Real-time video of the actual flyby is impossible, since it takes more six hours for a signal sent from Earth to reach the spaceship, named New Horizons, and another six hours for the response to arrive.
- Scientists are not sure what Ultima Thule (pronounced TOO-lee) looks like -- whether it is round or oblong or even if it is a single object or a cluster.
- It was discovered in 2014 with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, and is believed to be 12-20 miles (20-30 kilometers) in size.
- Scientists decided to study it with New Horizons after the spaceship, which launched in 2006, completed its main mission of flying by Pluto in 2015, returning the most detailed images ever taken of the dwarf planet.
- Spacecraft aims to make its closest approach within 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) of the surface of Ultima Thule.
- The flyby will be fast, at a speed of nine miles (14 kilometers) per second.
- Seven instruments on board will record high-resolution images and gather data about its size and composition.
- Ultima Thule is named for a mythical, far-northern island in medieval literature and cartography, according to NASA.
Source
The Hindu