by Greg Mayer

NASA’s New Horizons probe will be making a near approach to a distant object in the Kuiper Belt, nicknamed “Ultima Thule”, tomorrow, Jan. 1, 2019, Chicago time. You can follow the progress at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory New Horizon’s webpage, with links to televised events here.

Televised events are ongoing, and as I write this, a briefing is being streamed on NASA TV’s YouTube channel.

Brian May, the astrophysicist, who is a scientific collaborator on the New Horizons project, will be releasing a new song, “New Horizons”, to commemorate the voyage. It will be broadcast just after midnight, New York time, and should be shown on NASA TV. (May is perhaps better known as the guitarist from Queen.)

“Thule” was a place described by the 4th century BC Greek traveler Pytheas as being 6 days’ sail north of Britain, and “Ultima Thule” became a phrase meaning “the furthest place on Earth” (it is also, I have just learned, the name of a planet in Star Trek: DS 9). “Thule”, or some variant thereof, has been given as a name to a variety of places, most notably part of northern Greenland, where there is a US-Canadian-Danish air base. Officially named 2014 MU69, the Kuiper Belt Object’s nickname refers to its having the distinction of being the furthest object in the Solar System to ever be closely observed by man.