Nasa reveals first close-up pictures of Ultima Thule

Distant space rock looks like a ‘large red snowman’

Distant space rock called Ultima Thule revealed to look like a massive snowman
(Image credit: 2019 NASA)

Nasa has released its first close-up images of Ultima Thule, a 21-mile-tall lump of space rock that lies four billion miles away on the edge of the solar system.

Taken by Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft, the pictures reveal an unusual shape that looks like a snowman - suggesting Ultima Thule was originally two separate rocks that collided and stuck together.

The New Horizons fly-by smashes records for the “most distant ever exploration of a Solar System object”, reports the BBC. The previous record was set in 2015 when New Horizons flew past Pluto, three billion miles away.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The newly released images are just the first of thousands of photos taken by the probe in a region of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt – a distant collection of debris and dwarf planets.

More data from New Horizons will continue to be beamed back to Earth over the course of the next 20 months, with true higher-resolution images expected to start arriving in February, says The Guardian.