On Wednesday, Oct. 24, at 12:15 pm EDT [16:15 UTC], New Horizons team members will preview the mission’s New Year’s 2019 flyby of the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule during a media briefing at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The briefing will be streamed live on the meeting website:
https://aas.org/media-press/aas-press-conference-webcasts

[If you wish to participate in the Q&A following the briefing presentations, which is done via text chat with an on-site press officer, you’ll need the password, which you can obtain from AAS Press Officer Dr. Rick Fienberg (rick.fienberg@aas.org). Please email your request to Rick before 11:30 am EDT/15:30 UTC on Wednesday, Oct. 24.]

The Ultima flyby, with closest approach scheduled for 12:33 am EST in Jan. 1, will be the most distant planetary encounter in history. Team members will cover the significance and challenges of this flyby, its science goals and operational timelines, and the Kuiper Belt in the context of solar system exploration.

Presenters are:
*  Alan Stern, principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute
*  Carey Lisse, science team collaborator, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
*  Hal Weaver, project scientist, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
*  Kelsi Singer, co-investigator, Southwest Research Institute

The presenters’ graphics will be available on the New Horizons website [http://pluto.jhuapl.edu] at the start of the briefing.