Spacecraft opens new year with flyby on solar system's edge
January 2, 2019
LAUREL, Md. (AP) — NASA's New Horizons spacecraft pulled off the most distant exploration of another world Tuesday, skimming past a tiny, icy object 4 billion miles from Earth that looks to be shaped like a bowling pin.
Flight controllers in Maryland declared success 10 hours after the high-risk, middle-of-the-night encounter at the mysterious body known as Ultima Thule on the frozen fringes of our solar system, an astounding 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto.
"I don't know about all of you, but I'm really liking this 2019 thing so far," lead scientist Alan Stern of Southwe...
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