Ultima Thule

sketchfab

Human: (486958) 2014 MU69, nicknamed Ultima Thule, is a trans-Neptunian object situated in the Kuiper belt's vast expanse. This remarkable contact binary stretches 31 km (19 miles) long, comprising two joined bodies measuring 19 km (12 miles) and 14 km (9 miles) across, respectively dubbed “Ultima” and “Thule”. With an orbital period of precisely 298 years and a remarkably low inclination and eccentricity, it's classified as a classical Kuiper belt object. On New Year's Day in 2019, the New Horizons space probe made history with a flyby at 05:33 UTC time, transforming 2014 MU69 into the farthest and most primitive object in our Solar System visited by a spacecraft to date, both bodies consisting of planetesimal aggregates assembled from much smaller building blocks.