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At 12:33 a.m., NASA scientists were celebrating. They weren’t ringing in the New Year late, they were celebrating a space milestone. The spacecraft known as New Horizons flew by a minor planet known as Ultima Thule––”Beyond the Known World.”

NPR describes the event:

“We have a healthy spacecraft,” announced the mission’s operations manager, Alice Bowman, as signals from the probe reached earth hours later. Stored on board are close-up pictures of the celestial body that’s less than 20 miles wide, and four billion miles from the sun. The first images, just a few pixels across, arrived Tuesday morning and revealed a floating mass shaped like dog-bone, a peanut or a bowling pin, depending on your interpretation.

According to the New York Times,

During the flyby, the spacecraft was out of communication with Earth because it was busy making scientific observations. Only hours later did New Horizons turn its antenna toward home. Then, it sent a 15-minute update on its status, confirming it had survived the flyby. The message took six hours to travel the 4.1 billion miles at the speed of light to Earth. Future transmissions are expected to convey new pictures and readings from the flyby.

 

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