A historic accomplishment: photos released of farthest object ever explored in space

It’s being called a historic achievement. The New Horizons spacecraft is still making observations traveling to the edge of our solar system and it’s all done with the help of research scientists based in Boulder, Colorado.

Photos released Thursday show the most distant object ever explored in outer space, about four billion miles away from Earth. It’s called Ultima Thule and it’s floating far past the orbit of Pluto.

The photos were made possible with the help of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder and professors at the University of Colorado Boulder. The primitive snowman looking object was formed four and a half billion years ago. The missions co-investigator and professor at CU Boulder Dr. Fran Bagenal says the photos give us a glimpse at how the planets were formed and are the building blocks of our solar system.

“Objects like Ultima Thule kicked in to deliver water to the Earth,” says Bagenal.

It was incredibly difficult to get there. The distance so magnificent, it took nine and a half years to get the piano-sized spacecraft from Earth to Pluto then another three and a half years to Ultima Thule. It was so far away and so mall Bagenal says even the powerful Hubble telescope couldn’t hone in on it, “it’s at the limits of what Hubble can do.”

With it being an additional billion miles away from Pluto, Bagenal says the easy part was the rocket science, but getting the spacecraft to the right place without a clear view was luck. “They said, ‘okay, we have about seven candidates, we will go with this one.’ and they got it.”

A miraculous and historic accomplishment that will revolutionize our knowledge of planetary science.