Ultima Journey Update

In their SITF title Mission To Pluto, author Mary Kay Carson and photographer Tom Uhlman took readers where no person or spacecraft had gone before: Pluto! An inside look at New Horizons, Mission to Pluto explores the first spacecraft mission to Pluto, which revealed the ice dwarf and its five moons as they had never been seen before. The book follows the team of scientists as they build, launch, and fly New Horizons three billion miles. In July of 2015, New Horizons reached Pluto after a nine-and-half-year journey.

In a new article, Join the Ultima Journey, Mary Kay Carson reports that New Horizons “is about to make history again” as it nears “its second stop, an icy object being called the Ultima Thule.” While it may sound like a villain in the newest Avengers movie, Ultima Thule actually means “a place ‘beyond what is known'” and is “the perfect nick-name for this dark reddish chunk of ice and rock” that is a Kuiper Belt object and “a billion miles past Pluto.”

Read Mary Kay’s whole article for more details, and to stay up to date on the New Horizons mission. You’ll also find a fun activity called “Walk to Pluto” that will help you imagine just how far New Horizons has traveled. Talk about an adventure!

by Harriet Low

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