{"id":22489,"date":"2018-12-29T05:56:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-29T05:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=22489"},"modified":"2018-12-29T05:56:29","modified_gmt":"2018-12-29T05:56:29","slug":"new-horizons-at-ultima-thule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=22489","title":{"rendered":"New Horizons at Ultima Thule"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img src='https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/image\/1812\/NewHorizonsApproachesMU69_1024.jpg' style='max-width:600px;' \/><\/p>\n<div>When we celebrate the start of 2019, on January 1 the New Horizons spacecraft will flyby Ultima Thule. A world of the Kuiper belt 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, the nickname Ultima Thule (catalog designation 2014 MU69) fittingly means &#8220;beyond the known world&#8221;. Following its 2015 flyby of Pluto, New Horizons was targeted for this journey, attempting the most distant flyby for a spacecraft from Earth by approaching Ultima Thule to within about 3500 kilometers. The tiny world itself is about 30 kilometers in size. This year, an observing campaign with Earth-based telescopes determined the shape of the object to be a contact binary or a close binary sytem as in this artist&#8217;s illustration. New Horizons will image close up its unexplored surface in the dim light of the distant Sun. via NASA <a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap181229.html\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we celebrate the start of 2019, on January 1 the New Horizons spacecraft will flyby Ultima Thule. A world of the Kuiper belt 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, <a href=\"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=22489\" class=\"more-link\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10,12],"class_list":["entry","author-admin","post-22489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-whatsup","tag-ifttt","tag-nasa"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22490,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22489\/revisions\/22490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}