NASA is ringing in in the new year with a stellar discovery.
Just after the ball drops in Times Square early Tuesday morning, NASA's New Horizons probe will sail into the outer edges of the solar system. It'll do a fly-by of Ultima Thule, the "most distant solar system object ever explored," Space.com says.
New Horizons has spent years soaring through the solar system, flying past Pluto and toward the outer solar system in late 2015. Ultima Thule is about 18 miles across and located in the Kuiper Belt, which is full of asteroids and other icy objects, per NASA. It's about 1 billion miles past Pluto and 4 billion miles from the sun, making the Tuesday morning mission one of the farthest from Earth.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
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.
At just about 12:33 a.m. EST on Tuesday, New Horizons will get within 2,200 miles of Ultima Thule, zipping by at 32,000 miles per hour. It'll collect data on Ultima Thule and send it on a 20-month digital journey back to Earth, CBS News reports.
If you get sick of whoever's performing this New Year's Rockin' Eve, watch the fly-by and press conferences discussing New Horizon's discoveries below. You can also follow along at the @NASANewHorizons Twitter feed. Kathryn Krawczyk
-
Wright of Derby: From the Shadows – a ‘revelatory’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends The National Gallery’s show brings together the revered artist’s most spectacular works
-
Train Dreams pulses with ‘awards season gravitas’The Week Recommends Felicity Jones and Joel Edgerton star in this meditative period piece about a working man in a vanished America
-
Crossword: November 13, 2025The Week's daily crossword
-
Nobody seems surprised Wagner's Prigozhin died under suspicious circumstancesSpeed Read
-
Western mountain climbers allegedly left Pakistani porter to die on K2Speed Read
-
'Circular saw blades' divide controversial Rio Grande buoys installed by Texas governorSpeed Read
-
Los Angeles city workers stage 1-day walkout over labor conditionsSpeed Read
-
Mega Millions jackpot climbs to an estimated $1.55 billionSpeed Read
-
Bangladesh dealing with worst dengue fever outbreak on recordSpeed Read
-
Glacial outburst flooding in Juneau destroys homesSpeed Read
-
Scotland seeking 'monster hunters' to search for fabled Loch Ness creatureSpeed Read
