New Horizons, the unmanned spacecraft that gave us our best look at Pluto, took a look at its next target, a small body nicknamed Ultima Thule, in preparation for a flyby at the first of the year.
Because New Horizons is moving pretty lickety-darn-split out there, the course has to be the next best thing to perfect or better. If it's off, there's no chance to steer it quickly enough to adjust before the probe is well beyond the missed target.
Ultima Thule is what's called a Kuiper Belt Object -- a small body that's part of the Kuiper Belt of faraway solar system objects. In order to determine exactly where it is, observatories have to watch it pass in front of a star and block out the star's light. It wasn't actually discovered until 2014, eight years after New Horizons was launched.
So in other words, scientists are aiming a tiny probe flying at 29,000 miles an hour at a small piece of rock more than 46 times as far from the sun as we are. That's some precision work, I believe.
No comments:
Post a Comment