About a billion miles beyond Pluto, a spacecraft is closing in on an icy minor planet — a mysterious little place that’s only about 20 miles across.
If all goes well, NASA will start the new year with the most far-off exploration of a world ever, flying past it about 2,200 miles from the surface while taking images with an onboard telescope and camera. The closest approach will be at 12:33 a.m. ET on Jan 1.
“Really, we have no idea what to expect,” Alan Stern, principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission, said during a recent news conference.
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