Ultima Thule - First Images

NASA’s New Horizons mission arrived at Ultima Thule on 1 January 2019, at 05:33:00 UTC. The Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, minor planet number 485968, was nicknamed “Ultima Thule” (“beyond the known world”). Ultima Thule measures approximately 30 km in diameter, and is irregularly shaped. New Horizons spacecraft flew by Ultima Thule at a distance of 3500 km (2200 miles). At that time, Ultima Thule was at a distance of almost 6.5 billion km (4 billion miles) from the Sun, making this the most distant planetar