Outbound from Ultima Thule
This morning we all gathered at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab to see the last pre-flyby image of Ultima Thule that got sent down overnight. You can see it here, along with a graphic indicating the rotational axis and probable shape of this little Kuiper Belt Object.
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI; sketch courtesy of James Tuttle Keane
As I write this, the New Horizons flyby sequences of images are on their way to Earth. We will likely see the best one at the press conference on Wednesday. From there on out, the images and data will get better. There is a short-term delay in transmissions over next weekend. That’s because the spacecraft will be occulted by the Sun. However, the data recorders on New Horizons are full, and after the occultation, it’ll resume sending that information back to Earth for admiration and analysis.
Info from the Outer Solar System
This is the second major flyby in the Kuiper Belt for New Horizons. The first, as everyone remembers, was at Pluto. That’s a much bigger world than Ultima Thule, which is a few dozen kilometers long at most. Yet, size isn’t the big deal here. Or, rather, it is. That’s because little worlds the size of Ultima Thule hold the key to understanding the early objects that made up our solar system. Ultima has some of the most pristine materials known. They are in nearly the same shape as when they were born, at least 4.5 billion years ago.
Looking at these places helps us fill in gaps in our knowledge about the formation of the solar system. And, there’s a lot we don’t know about the primordial materials that existed in the solar nebula that existed before the Sun and planets began to form.
So, studies of Ultima Thule, missions to such places as asteroid Bennu and to comets, are all of a piece: they are aimed at showing us the “birth room pictures” of the solar system. That’s why it’s important to get up-close and personal with these objects. It’s why NASA has devoted time, attention, and money to the study of small bodies in the solar system. We may live on one of the bigger bodies, but we have to understand how it got that way. Where it came from, how it evolved? That’s another thing that Ultima can help us understand.
More to Come
There will be more data and images from Ultima Thule over the next year or so. Pay attention, because it’s like looking at baby pictures of ourselves when we were very young. Tiny Ultima (officially known as 2014 MU69) has a LOT to tell us.
#NewHorizons, #UltimaThule, #UltimaFlyby
