NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is set to go where no probe has ever gone before this New Year’s Day, when it beams back data from a tiny world that sits more than six billion kilometers away at the edge of the solar system.
The mysterious object the craft will be exploring is officially known as 2014 MU69 but its unofficial name is Ultima Thule. It picked up the unusual moniker, which means “beyond the known world,” following a NASA naming contest.
The ship is on course to reach its closest point to the object on January 1, a destination which will have taken 13 years to reach. Once the spacecraft flies by Ultima Thule, it will become the farthest world ever visited by a human-made object, a record that likely will stand for decades to come.
If everything goes to plan, New Horizons will cruise by Ultima Thule at a velocity of 51,500 kmph –nearly 15 kilometers per second– at 05:33am GMT on New Year’s Day. It will pass within about 3,540 kilometers of the never-seen-before surface.
