Summiting the Solar System is a story of exploration at its most ambitious and extreme. On January 1, 2019, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flies by a small Kuiper Belt Object known scientifically as 2014 MU69, but nicknamed "Ultima Thule." Ultima is four billion miles from Earth, and will be the most ancient and most distant world ever explored close up. It is expected to offer discoveries about the origin and evolution of our solar system. Chosen by the team and the public, the nickname honors the mythical land beyond the edges of the known world. But "Summiting" is much more than the story of a sophisticated, plutonium-fueled robotic spacecraft exploring far from the Sun. The New Horizons mission is
powered as much by the passions of a small team of humans—men and women, scientists and engineers—for whom pushing the frontiers of the known, climbing the very peaks of the possible, has been the dream of many decades. More on the New Horizons mission: pluto.jhuapl.edu Credit: Geoff Haines Stiles of Geoff Haines Stiles Productions.(GHSPi) Category Science & Technology
Ultima Thule is revealed to be a ruddy red two-tiered snowman.
More Videos You May Like