ladbible logo

To make sure you never miss out on your favourite NEW stories, we're happy to send you some reminders

Click 'OK' then 'Allow' to enable notifications

NASA New Horizons Probe Sends Back First Messages From Historic Mission

NASA New Horizons Probe Sends Back First Messages From Historic Mission

The probe left Earth more than 12 years ago and today it has finally sent back signals from the furthest exploration in history

Dominic Smithers

Dominic Smithers

Scientists at NASA are celebrating after receiving messages from its New Horizons probe, 6.5 billion km away.

The high-tech piece of kit survived its flyby of the 30km-wide Ultima Thule and managed to collect a host of pictures, measurements, and other data from the mission.

It is the furthest exploration of any object in the Solar System.

Scientists at John Hopkins Applied Science Laboratory whooped with joy and applauded as the first signals came back from the spacecraft, which left Earth more than a decade ago.

One scientist confirmed the good news: "We have a healthy spacecraft. We have just achieved the most distant flyby. We are ready for Ultima science transmission, science to help us understand the origins of our solar system."

Now that the message has been relayed, the boffins at ground control will start to sift through the information and it is understood that some of the pictures will be released this week.

It is hoped the information taken from Ultima will provide clues as to the formation of the Solar System.
NASA

However, it will take around 20 months for the probe to send back all of the information it has gathered during the flyby of Ultima Thule.

The 'Ultima' is part of an icy band of material that orbits the Sun, known as the Kuiper Belt. It is believed there could be hundreds of thousands of other bodies just like Ultima, which could hold the key to the early history of our Solar System, from more than four billion years ago.

To put into perspective just how incredible this is, the probe is two billion km past Neptune - the furthest of the classical planets - and 1.5 billion km past Pluto, which New Horizons studied in 2015.

When the probe was launched in 2006 it had two goals. The first was to provide information about the dwarf planet Pluto and its moons, and then travel further out to the Kuiper Belt to gather more data.

The team of scientists cheered when the first signals were received from the New Horizons craft.
NASA

Earlier this year NASA celebrated another incredible achievement when it successfully landed the InSight probe on Mars.

Despite a difficult landing, which was dubbed 'seven minutes of terror', the craft was able to send back a selfie from the planet's surface.

Over the next two years NASA is hoping to find out as much as possible about the mysterious red planet - specifically what it is made up of.

The multi-million pound space probe will use various devices to relay information back to NASA about the planet's deep structure, mapping its core, crust and mantle.

Featured Image Credit: NASA/Twitter

Topics: Science, World News, Interesting, US News, Technology, space