See Photos Of The Most Distant Space Object Seen By Humans

New images released by NASA show the most distant object in space ever reached by a spacecraft, which is currently 4 billion miles from Earth.

The spacecraft, New Horizons, flew past the object known as Ultima Thule on New Year’s day and the first images released by NASA were taken during the spacecraft’s approach, which brought it within just 2,200 miles of the object at 12:33 a.m. eastern time. The object is located in the Kuiper Belt, which NASA says is a “region of primordial objects that holds keys to understanding the origins of the solar system.”

NASA said that Ultima Thule is a “contact binary,” consisting of two connected spheres. The larger sphere is known as “Ultima” and measures 12 miles across while the smaller sphere is known as “Thule” and measures nine miles across.

The object is spinning like a propeller with the axis pointing approximately towards the New Horizons spacecraft, according to NASA. Scientists have determined that the object takes about 15 hours to make a full rotation.

Scientist Jeff Moore of NASA’s Ames Research Center said the two spheres formed when icy, pebble-size pieces coalesced in space billions of years ago. Then the spheres slowly spiraled closer to each other until they gently touched — as slowly as parking a car here on Earth at just a mile or two per hour — and stuck together.

Signals and data from New Horizons reached the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel almost exactly 10 hours after its closest approach to Ultima Thule. The applied physics lab at Johns Hopkins built and operates the spacecraft.

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“New Horizons is like a time machine, taking us back to the birth of the solar system. We are seeing a physical representation of the beginning of planetary formation, frozen in time,” Moore said in a NASA press release. “Studying Ultima Thule is helping us understand how planets form — both those in our own solar system and those orbiting other stars in our galaxy.”

Higher resolution images from the flyby are expected to arrive in the coming weeks and months.

New Horizons launched in January 2006 and will continue its exploration until at least 2021.

Reporting and writing from The Associated Press was used in this report.

All photos provided by NASA via Associated Press.