UNITED STATES: NASA spacecraft survives risky encounter with faraway dark world

The US space agency’s New Horizons probe has made contact with Earth to confirm its successful flyby of the icy world known as Ultima Thule. The encounter occurred some 6.5bn km (4bn miles) away, making it the most distant ever exploration of an object in our Solar System. New Horizons acquired gigabytes of photos and […]

The US space agency’s New Horizons probe has made contact with Earth to confirm its successful flyby of the icy world known as Ultima Thule.

The encounter occurred some 6.5bn km (4bn miles) away, making it the most distant ever exploration of an object in our Solar System.

New Horizons acquired gigabytes of photos and other observations during the pass. It will now send these home over the coming months.

The radio message from the robotic craft was picked up by one of Nasa’s big antennas, in Madrid, Spain.

It had taken fully six hours and eight minutes to traverse the great expanse of space between Ultima and Earth. Controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland greeted the reception of the signal with cheers and applause.

“We have a healthy spacecraft,” announced Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman. “We’ve just accomplished the most distant flyby.”