NASA space probe 'phones home' in landmark mission to solar system's edge

The spacecraft will ping back more detailed images and data from Thule in the coming days, NASA said

NASA’s New Horizons explorer successfully “phoned home” on Tuesday after a journey to the most distant world ever explored by humankind, a frozen rock at the edge of the solar system that scientists hope will uncover secrets to its creation. 

The nuclear-powered space probe has travelled 4 billion miles (6.4 billion km) to come within 2,200 miles (3,540 km) of Ultima Thule, an apparently peanut-shaped, 20-mile-long (32-km-long) space rock in the uncharted heart of the Kuiper Belt. The belt is a ring of icy celestial bodies just outside Neptune’s orbit. 

Engineers at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland cheered when the