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Watch Ultima Thule Spin Like a Propeller in This Awesome New Horizons Flyby Video
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | January 17, 2019 07:25am ET
The faraway object Ultima Thule spins into view in a dramatic new video captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.
New Horizons zoomed within just 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) of Ultima Thule in the wee hours of Jan. 1, pulling off the most-distant planetary flyby in spaceflight history. Ultima Thule lies more than 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) from Earth — 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) beyond the orbit of Pluto, which New Horizons encountered in July 2015.
The video, which mission team members released Tuesday (Jan. 15), captures 7 hours during New Horizons' final approach, just before the probe buzzed the snowman-shaped Ultima Thule. During those 7 hours, New Horizons closed the gap between itself and its target from 310,000 miles (500,000 km) to 17,100 miles (28,000 km), mission team members said. [New Horizons at Ultima Thule: Full Coverage]
And Ultima Thule gets sharper as it looms larger in the frame.
More:
https://www.space.com/43023-ultima-thule-spin-propeller-flyby-video.html?utm_source=notification
