<p class="title">The first detailed images beamed back by NASA's New Horizons after the flyby of Ultima Thule -- the most distant and possibly oldest space object ever explored -- show that the icy 'worldlet' resembles a reddish snowman.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Its appearance, unlike anything we have seen before, illuminates the processes that built the planets four and a half billion years ago, the US space agency said in a statement.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"The flyby is a historic achievement," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in the US.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Never before has any spacecraft team tracked down such a small body at such high speed so far away in the abyss of space. New Horizons has set a new bar for state-of-the-art spacecraft navigation," Stern said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Based on fuzzy images obtained earlier, the scientists had said that Ultima Thule resembled a bowling pin.</p>.<p class="bodytext">However, the new images -- taken from as close as 27,000 kilometres on approach -- revealed Ultima Thule as a "contact binary," consisting of two connected spheres, resembling a snowman.</p>.<p class="bodytext">End to end, the world measures 31 kilometers in length. The team has dubbed the larger sphere "Ultima" and the smaller sphere "Thule".</p>.<p class="bodytext">The two spheres likely joined as early as 99 per cent of the way back to the formation of the solar system, colliding no faster than two cars in a fender-bender.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"New Horizons is like a time machine, taking us back to the birth of the solar system. We are seeing a physical representation of the beginning of planetary formation, frozen in time," said Jeff Moore, New Horizons Geology and Geophysics team lead.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Studying Ultima Thule is helping us understand how planets form -- both those in our own solar system and those orbiting other stars in our galaxy," said Moore.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Data from the New Year's Day flyby will continue to arrive over the next weeks and months, with much higher resolution images yet to come.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"In the coming months, New Horizons will transmit dozens of data sets to Earth, and we'll write new chapters in the story of Ultima Thule -- and the solar system," said Helene Winters, New Horizons Project Manager.</p>
<p class="title">The first detailed images beamed back by NASA's New Horizons after the flyby of Ultima Thule -- the most distant and possibly oldest space object ever explored -- show that the icy 'worldlet' resembles a reddish snowman.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Its appearance, unlike anything we have seen before, illuminates the processes that built the planets four and a half billion years ago, the US space agency said in a statement.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"The flyby is a historic achievement," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in the US.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Never before has any spacecraft team tracked down such a small body at such high speed so far away in the abyss of space. New Horizons has set a new bar for state-of-the-art spacecraft navigation," Stern said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Based on fuzzy images obtained earlier, the scientists had said that Ultima Thule resembled a bowling pin.</p>.<p class="bodytext">However, the new images -- taken from as close as 27,000 kilometres on approach -- revealed Ultima Thule as a "contact binary," consisting of two connected spheres, resembling a snowman.</p>.<p class="bodytext">End to end, the world measures 31 kilometers in length. The team has dubbed the larger sphere "Ultima" and the smaller sphere "Thule".</p>.<p class="bodytext">The two spheres likely joined as early as 99 per cent of the way back to the formation of the solar system, colliding no faster than two cars in a fender-bender.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"New Horizons is like a time machine, taking us back to the birth of the solar system. We are seeing a physical representation of the beginning of planetary formation, frozen in time," said Jeff Moore, New Horizons Geology and Geophysics team lead.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Studying Ultima Thule is helping us understand how planets form -- both those in our own solar system and those orbiting other stars in our galaxy," said Moore.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Data from the New Year's Day flyby will continue to arrive over the next weeks and months, with much higher resolution images yet to come.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"In the coming months, New Horizons will transmit dozens of data sets to Earth, and we'll write new chapters in the story of Ultima Thule -- and the solar system," said Helene Winters, New Horizons Project Manager.</p>