AFP
Tampa
A NASA spaceship is zooming toward the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever photographed by humankind, a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule about four billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away.
The US space agency will ring in the New Year with a live online broadcast to mark the historic flyby of the mysterious object in a dark and frigid region of space known as the Kuiper Belt at 12:33 am January 1 (0533 GMT Tuesday).
A guitar anthem recorded by legendary Queen guitarist Brian May -- who also holds an advanced degree in astrophysics -- will be released just after midnight to accompany a video simulation of the flyby, as NASA commentators describe the close pass on www.nasa.gov/nasalive.
Real-time video of the actual flyby is impossible, since it takes more than six hours for a signal sent from Earth to reach the spaceship, named New Horizons, and another six hours for the response to arrive.
But if all goes well, the first images should be in hand by the end of New Year’s Day.
"It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not,” Alan Stern, the lead planetary scientist on the New Horizons mission, wrote in The New York Times on Monday. He described the New Horizons spaceship as an "amazing piece of American workmanship, operating essentially flawlessly in space for well over a decade.”
Its destination, Ultima Thule, "is 17,000 times as far away as the ‘giant leap’ of Apollo’s lunar missions,” he added, recalling that December 1968 marks the 50th anniversary of the first time humans ever explored another world, when US astronauts orbited the Moon aboard Apollo 8. "This week, New Horizons will continue in that legacy,” Stern wrote.
"As you celebrate New Year’s Day, cast an eye upward and think for a moment about the amazing things our country and our species can do when we set our minds to it.”
What does it look like? Scientists are not sure what Ultima Thule (pronounced TOO-lee) looks like -- whether it is round or oblong or even if it is a single object or a cluster. It was discovered in 2014 with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, and is believed to be 12-20 miles in size.
Tampa
A NASA spaceship is zooming toward the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever photographed by humankind, a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule about four billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away.
The US space agency will ring in the New Year with a live online broadcast to mark the historic flyby of the mysterious object in a dark and frigid region of space known as the Kuiper Belt at 12:33 am January 1 (0533 GMT Tuesday).
A guitar anthem recorded by legendary Queen guitarist Brian May -- who also holds an advanced degree in astrophysics -- will be released just after midnight to accompany a video simulation of the flyby, as NASA commentators describe the close pass on www.nasa.gov/nasalive.
Real-time video of the actual flyby is impossible, since it takes more than six hours for a signal sent from Earth to reach the spaceship, named New Horizons, and another six hours for the response to arrive.
But if all goes well, the first images should be in hand by the end of New Year’s Day.
"It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not,” Alan Stern, the lead planetary scientist on the New Horizons mission, wrote in The New York Times on Monday. He described the New Horizons spaceship as an "amazing piece of American workmanship, operating essentially flawlessly in space for well over a decade.”
Its destination, Ultima Thule, "is 17,000 times as far away as the ‘giant leap’ of Apollo’s lunar missions,” he added, recalling that December 1968 marks the 50th anniversary of the first time humans ever explored another world, when US astronauts orbited the Moon aboard Apollo 8. "This week, New Horizons will continue in that legacy,” Stern wrote.
"As you celebrate New Year’s Day, cast an eye upward and think for a moment about the amazing things our country and our species can do when we set our minds to it.”
What does it look like? Scientists are not sure what Ultima Thule (pronounced TOO-lee) looks like -- whether it is round or oblong or even if it is a single object or a cluster. It was discovered in 2014 with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, and is believed to be 12-20 miles in size.