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

United States - 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 traveled 6.4 billion kilometers to come within 3,540 km of Ultima Thule, an apparently peanut-shaped, 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 spacecraft's first signals came through the National Aeronautic and Space Agency's Deep Space Network at 10:28 am local time.

"We have a healthy spacecraft," Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman declared.