There will be another flurry of spaceflight activity around the new year. NASA's asteroid-sampling OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which has been flying along with the space rock Bennu since Dec. 3, will slip into orbit around that object on Dec. 31.
Just hours later, NASA's New Horizons probe will zoom past the small, distant object Ultima Thule, which lies about 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto. That dwarf planet was New Horizons' first flyby target, you probably recall; the spacecraft cruised past Pluto in July 2015, returning stunning images of water-ice mountains, vast plains of nitrogen ice and other dramatic landscapes.
And sometime in the first few days of January, China's Chang'e 4 mission will drop onto the far side of the moon, if all goes according to plan. Chang'e 4, which launched on Dec. 7, consists of a lander and rover, which will touch down within the huge South Pole-Aitken Basin. No probe has ever touched down on the lunar far side, which always faces away from Earth.
https://www.space.com/42772-four-rocket-launches-spacex-blue-origin-webcasts.html
Parker Solar Probe entered full operational status (known as Phase E) on January 1, with all systems online and operating as designed. The spacecraft has been delivering data from its instruments to Earth via the Deep Space Network, and to date more than 17 gigabits of science data has been downloaded. The full dataset from the first orbit will be downloaded by April.
http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/Show-Article.php?articleID=116
Hayabusa 2 probe landing on Ryugu asteroid pushed back to Jan. 2019
The kings sarcophagus
Osiris’ death also has some parallels with our mission. Many versions of the myth suggest that his brother Set, plotted his assassination because he wanted his throne. Set fooled Osiris into getting into a coffin specially designed to fit him alone, which Set then shut, sealed with lead, and threw into the Nile. Similarly, OSIRIS-REx has a specially designed sample-return capsule to transport the precious sample of Bennu back to the surface of the Earth.
https://dslauretta.com/2015/01/22/osiris-rex-whats-in-a-name/
https://www.skymania.com/wp/watch-comet-wirtanen-brighten-as-it-makes-close-approach-to-earth/
https://www.skymania.com/wp/watch-comet-wirtanen-brighten-as-it-makes-close-approach-to-earth/
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