Encounter with Ultima Thule: The Most Distant Object Humanity Has Ever Explored

After a successful encounter with Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft, for the first time flew by a member of the Kuiper Belt of icy objects beyond Neptune. This particular object, officially called 2014MU69, but informally named “Ultimate Thule” (meaning the farthest place beyond the known world,) turned out to be a “contact binary” - two smaller icy worlds stuck together. Such objects are left over from the time our solar system was first coming together and provides scientists with a glimpse of what it was like here before the Earth even formed. Dr. Moore will share an insider’s view (with great images) of how the mission got to its targets and what we learned while passing by Ultima Thule.

Speaker: Jeff Moore, NASA Ames