sentence fly when you ’re make fun at the edge of the Solar System . NASA ’s New Horizons spacecraft is now halfway to its next butt , an objective in the Kuiper Belt .
In case you forgot , this space vehicle became our first emissary to Pluto onJuly 14 , 2015 . But after returning stunning image and information on this gnome planet , it was send out on a unexampled delegation to research 2014 MU69 , which it will fly by on January 1 , 2019 .
And as of yesterday , it has passed the halfway pointedness to this finish . It was 782.45 million kilometers ( 486.19 million miles ) from Pluto , which is exactly half the distance to this Kuiper Belt Object ( KBO ) . Overall , the space vehicle is 5.7 billion kilometers ( 3.5 billion miles ) from Earth , or about 5.3 scant - hours .
“ It ’s fantastic to have completed half the journeying to our next flyby ; that flyby will set the criminal record for the most distant world ever explore in the history of civilization , ” said Alan Stern , New Horizons chief investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder , Colorado , in astatement .
This figure , taken by New Horizons on January 28 , 2017 , shows the auspicate locating of MU69 in the yellowed rhomb . NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI
Interestingly , while it is halfway there in term of distance , it is not midway there in terms of metre . That ’s because the Sun ’s gravitative pulling is gradually slowing down the ballistic capsule , so the second half of its journey will take a mo longer . It will reach the halfway point in time at 5.24pm EDT ( 10.24pm BST ) this Friday , April 7 .
Once it make it at MU69 , the visit will be abbreviated , with the ballistic capsule using its cameras and instruments to study this world in mere hours . But it will be our first ever front at an objective so far from Earth , consider to be a remnant of our Solar System ’s formation . The target is no more than40 kilometers(25 miles ) across , much smaller than Pluto , which is 2,374 kilometers ( 1,475 mile ) in diam .
The spacecraft is about to enter a hibernation period of 157 days , which will be the first fourth dimension it has been turned off since December 6 , 2014 . When it wake up again , scientist will use New Horizons to study more than two - dozen Kuiper belt object from a space of the fashion to MU69 . It will see MU69 for the first meter in September 2018 .
Pluto might be long start , but there is enough more excitement to arrive from New Horizons .
