NASA releases new HD images of "space snowman" Ultima Thule

NASA kicked off the year 2019 with a bang as its New Horizons probe flew past the most distant object in our solar system. Dubbed "Ultima Thule" is a whopping four billion miles from our planet.

The expedition also led the scientists to learn more about the creation of our solar system. Now we have a high-resolution photo of the mysterious trans-Neptunian body.

The new image from the space agency shows the "space snowman" in high detail.

The new image was captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft when it was only 4,200 miles from the object. The dual-lobed space rock is situated around a billion miles from Pluto. It takes around six hours to receive data to reach our planet due to the huge distance involved.

The first image of Ultima Thule was taken earlier this month. The image showed an awkwardly shaped object which provoked some interesting reactions on social media platforms. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft entered the new year with a flyby of this very distant body in our solar system. It is also probably the oldest object visited by a spacecraft.

The image soon became a hot topic and many Twitter users posted a lot of jokes and memes on the image. The reactions also included many photoshopped images of the object. But now we have the images in high resolution, which might put the Twitter jokes to rest.