The American space agency’s New Horizons probe remains on course for its daring flyby of Ultima Thule.
When the mission sweeps past the 30km wide object on New Year’s Day, it will be making the most distant ever visit to a Solar System body – at some 6.5 billion km from Earth.
Mission planners decided at the weekend to forego a possible trajectory change.
It means the probe will get to fly 3,500km from icy Ultima’s surface to take a series of photos and other data.
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