Trans-Pluto dwarf planet Ultima Thule, first photos

This 21 June 2019 video is called What Did New Horizons See During Its Journey To Pluto And Beyond? 2006-2019.

A 30 August 2018 video used to say about itself:

NASA’s Pluto probe spots the next deep space rock it’s zooming toward

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, known for flying by Pluto in 2015, has finally spotted its next target at the edge of the Solar System. On August 16th, the distant probe captured its first images of the space rock it’s currently zooming toward — an icy body nearly 20 miles across that’s been nicknamed Ultima Thule.

It’s a major milestone for the New Horizons team as they prepare the spacecraft for its rendezvous with Ultima Thule on New Year’s Day 2019.

The New Horizons spacecraft has been en route to Ultima Thule ever since October 2015, just a few months after it flew by Pluto in July.

Following the Pluto meet-up, NASA decided to extend the New Horizons mission so that the vehicle would fly by another target in the distant Solar System. The mission team selected Ultima Thule, also named 2014 MU69, since it’s in an ideal position beyond Pluto, and it didn’t take too much fuel for New Horizons to change course to meet up with the rock.

By Christopher Crockett, 2:39pm, August 29, 2018:

New Horizons has sent back the first images of Ultima Thule, its next target

New Horizons has its next destination in sight.

The spacecraft, which buzzed Pluto in 2015, captured its first images on August 16 of the remote icy world nicknamed Ultima Thule, confirming that New Horizons is on track for its January 1 flyby. With about 160 million kilometers to go — roughly the same distance as Earth is from the sun — the tiny world appears as no more than a faint speck in the probe’s camera.

The pictures also barely set a new record: At roughly 6 billion kilometers from Earth, they are the farthest images ever taken. For decades, that honor was held by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which in 1990 snapped pictures of Earth and many of our neighboring planets from nearly the same distance.

Officially dubbed 2014 MU69, Ultima Thule is part of the Kuiper Belt, a field of frozen detritus left over from the formation of the planets 4.6 billion years ago. By sending New Horizons to take pictures and measure the chemical makeup of Ultima’s surface, researchers hope to unearth clues about the origin of our solar system.