Space Image of the Day Gallery (December 2018): Page 3

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Next Stop: Ultima Thule!

This is the first detection of Ultima Thule using the highest-resolution mode of the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager aboard the New Horizons spacecraft. Three separate images, each with an exposure time of 0.5 seconds, were combined to produce the image — NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Monday, December 31, 2018:NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is gearing up for its New Year's Eve flyby of the distant Kuiper Belt object MU69, also known as Ultima Thule. The probe, which flew by Pluto in 2015, will swing by Ultima Thule at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) on Jan. 1, and you can watch the flyby live online. New Horizons captured this view of the distant object on Dec. 24, when Ultima Thule was 6.3 million miles (10 million kilometers) away from the spacecraft. — Hanneke Weitering

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