The farthest explored object from Earth is essentially a giant rocky snowman


NASA's New Horizons probe traveled billions of miles from Earth just to find a big old snowman floating in space.
Just after midnight on New Year's Day, New Horizons conducted a flyby mission to Ultima Thule, an 18-mile-long hunk of rock floating about a billion miles past Pluto. The successful mission makes Ultima Thule the farthest explored object in our solar system. And on Wednesday, the probe sent back its first color image from the flyby, which depicts what looks like two rusty chunks of snow stuck together.
NASA already knew Ultima Thule, found in Kuiper Belt of asteroids and comet dust beyond the major planets, was a binary object. Its two chunks, literally named Ultima and Thule, probably collided "no faster than two cars in a fender-bender ... as early as 99 percent of the way back to the formation of the solar system," per the New Horizons press release.
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.
The rest of the probe's data on Ultima Thule is set to arrive over the next 20 months, the New Horizons team says. That leaves plenty time to come up with a better Earth-centric comparison for the image we already have. Kathryn Krawczyk
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.
-
Nvidia: unstoppable force, or powering down?
Talking Point Sales of firm's AI-powering chips have surged above market expectations –but China is the elephant in the room
-
5 hard-working cartoons about Labor Day celebrations
Cartoons Artists take on creation of AI, spelling mistakes, and more
-
Codeword: September 7, 2025
The Week's daily codeword puzzle
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclub
Speed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's ills
Speed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, Stallone
Speed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's view
Speed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history
-
Charlamagne Tha God irks Trump with Epstein talk
Speed Read The radio host said the Jeffrey Epstein scandal could help 'traditional conservatives' take back the Republican Party
-
CBS cancels Colbert's 'Late Show'
Speed Read 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' is ending next year
-
Shakespeare not an absent spouse, study proposes
speed read A letter fragment suggests that the Shakespeares lived together all along, says scholar Matthew Steggle
-
New Mexico to investigate death of Gene Hackman, wife
speed read The Oscar-winning actor and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their home with no signs of foul play