Ultima Thule: Nasa prepares to explore most distant world ever probed by humankind

On New Year’s Day, the New Horizons interplanetary probe will pass just 2,200 miles from the object that is one billion miles further from Earth than Pluto, the distant dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt that itself is four billion miles from us. It will two years to send back all its data on the object officially known as 2014 MU69, but nicknamed Ultima Thule, a Latin phrase meaning “’beyond the borders of the known world”. Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator said that on December 15, the team had decided there were no rings or moons in the path of New Horizons.