Dec. 26 (UPI) -- NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is making its final approach to the Kuiper Belt, with plans to perform a historic flyby of Ultima Thule on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day -- the farthest planetary flyby in human history.
"Our team feels like we have been riding along with the spacecraft, as if we were mariners perched on the crow's nest of a ship, looking out for dangers ahead," Mark Showalter, a researcher at the SETI Institute, said in a news release. "The team was in complete consensus that the spacecraft should remain on the closer trajectory, and mission leadership adopted our recommendation."