The most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft

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What do NASA scientists and the lead guitarist for the rock band Queen have in common? A bowling pin-shaped rock four billion miles from Earth that is making world headlines today.

Ultima Thule is a billion miles on the other side of Pluto. The space rock is approximately twenty miles long by ten miles wide and seems to spin like a propeller through space. It could also be two objects in orbit around each other.

The object was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope four years ago and named 2014 MU69. A public campaign hosted by NASA renamed it–“Ultima Thule” is a reference to the most distant place beyond the borders of the known world.

Yesterday, the NASA spacecraft New Horizons conducted a successful flyby of this remote space object. Over the next few days, scientists expect to receive more photographs of the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft. Because the probe is so far from Earth, scientists say data on Ultima Thule will continue streaming to us until September 2020.

Brian May, the lead guitarist for Queen and an astrophysicist, is a participating scientist on the New Horizons project. He wrote a song to honor the mission.

Traveling 31,000 miles an hour

We could focus this morning on NASA’s stunning achievement.

New Horizon measures only 7.2 by 6.9 by 8.9 feet. This tiny space probe is blazing through space in excess of 31,000 miles per hour. The scientific ingenuity and sophistication required to engineer and operate such a device are truly remarkable.

Or we could focus on the wonders of the universe New Horizon is exploring.

As we have noted, the probe flew approximately four…