NASA scans far solar system object

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured images of a space object called Ultima Thule early on New Year's Day yesterday, in the furthest flyby of an object in our solar system. Ultima Thule is in the Kuiper Belt, which contains comets, asteroids and other small bodies made largely of ice, and New Horizons passed it more than three years after reaching Pluto. The images show that Ultima Thule seems to be shaped similarly to a bowling pin, with a size of about 20 miles by 10 miles, and is spinning end over end. However, it's also possible that it's two objects orbiting each other. Because New Horizons is so far away, it will take until September 2020 to get all of the photos and data that it acquired during its pass by Ultima Thule.


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