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Old 29th December 2018, 13:34
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BobClay United Kingdom BobClay is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Cornwall UK
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Stuff Happening Far Far Away

On New Years day the space craft New Horizons will make a flyby of Kuiper Belt object MU69 (UltimaThule.) This is the ship that took those incredible pictures of Pluto a few years back. It is now (about) 4 billion miles from the Earth. To give you an idea of just how far that is, imagine driving at 100 mph for ten hours every day, day in day out. Pretty hard driving, but you would cover 1000 miles per day. Even so not worth contemplating the journey unless you're going to be around for over 11,000 years. (Unlikely.)

It'll take more than six hours for the data from the flyby to reach us. Kuiper Belt objects are as yet mysterious leftovers from the formation of the Solar System. This will be the first view of one.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/#page-top
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