New Horizons Completes Fly-by of Ultima Thule

What I really want to know is if the timing was purposeful or not. Having New Horizons complete this historic fly-by on New Year's Day just seems a little too convenient.

Anyway, we have our first actual image of a Kuiper Belt object! And it's ... a red snowman!

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Obviously, this isn't the greatest picture of all time, and more will be coming. New Horizons is beaming back data at a very low power, so it's going to take more than a year to get everything back from the encounter. Hey, New Horizons is 4 billion miles away, you gotta be patient with these things.

But I'm sure we'll be getting more and better pictures in the days to come. I doubt this will be the last time I write about little Ultima Thule.