hello, this is bbc news. the headlines... police say they're treating the stabbing of three people at victoria station in manchester last night as terror—related. signals from the nasa space probe new horizons confirm it has successfully flown past icy mass ultima thule — the most distant object every explored in the solar system the archbishop of canterbury uses his new year sermon to encourage people to go into 2019 in a spirit of openness towards each other. in russia, an 11—month—old baby boy is pulled from the rubble of a block of flats hit by a gas explosion — eight bodies have so far been found. more now on the news that signals

from new horizons confirmed that it has flown past ultima thule. we can cross over to laurel in maryland now where the team behind that ground—breaking nasa probe are holding a news conference. this morning, the new horizons spacecraft, flew by the object nicknamed ultima thule, the farthest flyby in history. this morning, at about10.30, flyby in history. this morning, at about 10.30, the spacecraft phoned home, sending a mission back to mission operations to let us know it was healthy and had factored all of the data we asked from ultima thule. we are here this morning to have members of the team bring us up—to—date on the spacecraft staters, show us the latest images and lay out what is ahead. we will be taking questions from the media here and over the phone. we encourage everybody watching online to follow us with the hash tags #ultimathule. 0ur panel today is the principal investigator alan stern, from the southwest research

institute. the new horizons missions operation manager, alex bowman. mission systems engineer chris, and the new horizons project scientist hywel weaver. the panel will take some questions. well, i don't know about you, but i am really liking this 2018 things so far. applause we're here to tell you that last night, overnight, the united states spacecraft new horizons conducted the furthest exploration in the history of humankind, and it did so spectacularly. thousands of operations aboard the spacecraft had to work correctly in order to be

able to tell you this, and now we know that it all did. let me turn it over to the mission operations boss, alice, to say more about that. we had a great support with the madrid station, and you saw that we locked up station, and you saw that we locked up on the spacecraft. everything looks great. we are definitely looking forward to getting down the science data, so that the scientists and the world can see what the outer solar system, the origins of the solar system, the origins of the solar system, the origins of the solar system, hold for us, what surprises. i am the mission system engineer, and i want to give you a feeling about what it was like to be in the mission centre. the first person to report was the rf communications lead. we kept our

eyes on him. as soon as he started smiling, we knew things were going well. it took awhile for him to and then we went to the cdh lead. he said the recorder have the data he expected. the propulsion lead said that the time pressures looked good. we went around the subsystems, power, everybody reporting green staters. it was just a thrill. and then the cheers erupted. it was an amazing experience. i would like to return back to alan, he was rushing in from the situation room, to congratulate alice on her punishment. i want to tell you a bit about the science, then hal weaver will tell you even more. yesterday, we started getting pre—arrival data taken from we started getting pre—arrival data ta ken from about we started getting pre—arrival data taken from about halfi million miles out. these are still very low resolution images. as we speak right now, signals from the spacecraft are coming back across the solar system at the speed of light. they are

currently about halfway back to earth. overnight tonight, the science team will be analysing the first high—resolution images which we will be able to show you tomorrow. the image i am about to show you is the best image of ultima that we got pre—flyby. it's ok to laugh, it is better than the one we had yesterday. there is is. meet ultima! applause so, in my line of work, we'd like to interpret even images like this. what can we tell you from this? we have a better handle on the size of ultima. it is about 35 by 15 kilometres, you can see a scale bar in miles. secondly, even seedier —— you can see that a regular shape.

one possibility is that the upper lobe is smaller. or it might be that these are two things that are in orbit around each other, and just blurred together because of their proximity. tomorrow, we will know which of those is the case. now, i am going to turn it over to hal for even more exciting results. 0k, thank you very much. as you said, what a difference a day makes. ultima thule is finally revealing its secrets to us. even though it is a pixelated blogs still, it is a better pixilated blob. in fact, these images we have just gotten, that we are showing you today, have allowed us to resolve something that was really puzzling to scientists. we we re pretty was really puzzling to scientists. we were pretty certain it was highly

elongated, and it must be spinning. and that kind of a situation, you would expect to see brightness variations. here is an elongated object. as you imagine the camera looking at this, in this dimension, in this direction, you see a lot of area, and you flip it like this, and you see hardly anything. we expected to see brightness variations of ultima thule overtime and we were not seen that. that is because the pole is almost pointing towards the spacecraft, like a propeller blade, running around. that explains everything, basically. there is no changing brightness because we are always seeing the same side. but there is definitely a highly elongated shape. now we are working oi'i elongated shape. now we are working on exactly how fast it is spinning. if you look at this little... once again, we have pixelated blogs, the science team is making as much as we

possibly can out of images like this. but even from these images, you can see an artist's representation of what is going on. in one orientation, the first one to the far left, and then one hour later you see it has moved. the whole thing has rotated, in our field of view. and then another hour and a half later, you see it is moving again. that is how we tell that rotation rate. the data is still not good enough to tell the difference between a 15 hour period and a 30 hour period, and as alan said, we are not positive that the two things are stuck together like this. this will all be revealed tomorrow or the next day. it will be dramatically different. ultima thule

will be turned into a real world after you see the images tomorrow. i think that was my last slide. we will open up for questions. raise your hand and we will get you a microphone. when you get the microphone, please say who you are before the question. it sort of looks like a peanut. it must be a huge surprise, because the two orbiting smaller pieces, a thing like this, it was not on your list, was it? how surprised you to see something like this? you know, we had a hint in the summer of 2017, when we painted out the silhouette of ultima as it crossed in front of the star that we could observe from argentina. it gave a solid indication that it was a elongated

and probably something by this. indication that it was a elongated and probably something by thism fa ct, and probably something by thism fact, most of the small bodies in the solar system are highly elongated. they don't have enough mass to force themselves into a perfect sphere. they form into these clu m py perfect sphere. they form into these clumpy things. that is what you saw with the comet, the target of the rosetta mission. it was a bilobed entity. that is common amongst asteroids. we were expecting something along these lines. asteroids. we were expecting something along these lineslj asteroids. we were expecting something along these lines. i think

for alan and alice, this is not your first rodeo with a flyby, but it seems like it was a different experience. i am wondering, as you we re experience. i am wondering, as you were waiting for the downlink, what was the mood in the team? was it a similar feeling, was the mood in the team? was it a similarfeeling, completely different? i know there were pins and needles in the audience. different? i know there were pins and needles in the audiencem different? i know there were pins and needles in the audience. it was and needles in the audience. it was a little bit different. part of it had to do with the timing. if you remember, with pluto, we had the flyby actually occurring in the morning, about 7am. then we had contact with the spacecraft in the evening at about nine o'clock. we pretty much spent the whole day here. this one, we celebrated at night, a little after midnight. then we went home and came back early in the morning. it was this feeling like, gosh, we already celebrated but we really haven't gotten that signal back from the spacecraft. so, you know, it was a little bit

different, a different feeling. i think i was probably a little bit more nervous this time. again, we do it again. it's fantastic. applause i had ihada i had a different view of this to alice. i was extremely confident in the spacecraft and our team. i had just a normal morning coming into work and i was not worried about it. i got work and i was not worried about it. igota work and i was not worried about it. i got a nice night's sleep. but i will say that the new horizons team makes it look easy. all of these projects in space flight require enormous attention to detail and smart and dedicated people. this project is no exception. this team spent two and a half years working at tale off to make sure that this would go buy the book. from

everything we can tell, they scored 100 on the test. they really, really good. applause congratulations. matt kaplan from the planetary society, planetary radio. how long before the very highest resolution images, and the colour images might start to appear? the colour images will start to come down this week. they will be low resolution, so what we will do is ta ke resolution, so what we will do is take the somewhat higher resolution black—and—white images and we will drape the collar over it to give the best impression of what ultima looks like a high resolution. but in colour. and then, overtime, we like a high resolution. but in colour. and then, over time, we will get better resolution in both the colour and the panchromatic. the highest resolution panchromatic images will not come down until

about february. chris lindop, from bbc sky at night. i know a huge amount of work goes into getting the data from the spacecraft. can you talk us through what happened overnight? i know people were working hard to make that image and people were beaming yesterday when they thought they had it. could you tell us more about that process? share, last night, an hour before, the closest approach, the spacecraft was incredibly busy. we squeezed every observation we can into that time period, taking the highest resolution images. instead of sending it back to the earth, we wa nt of sending it back to the earth, we want to have the spacecraft pointing to the target, optimising the scientific return. including the highest resolution images. at the

time of closest approach, if required perfect pointing almost. and we think, based on everything we have seen so far, that was achieved. as alan said, the highest resolution images probably will not come down to us until about february. tomorrow and the next day, ultima thule is going to be a completely different world compared to what we are seeing now. we will finally start to see lots of detail on the service. all of that data was taken a bit earlier than the highest resolution images. we are really looking forward to that. kelly beatty from sky and telescope, for alice, because i can see you. is there anything about the positioning of this peanut in your field of view that gives you confidence or concern that the highest resolution images will be

successful or not? from an operations point of view, we did everything we were asked to do by the navigation team. we believe that it is going to be centred. that is a science question as to how much we are going to get, and what the expectation is. let me set your expectations, this was a stretch goal for the spacecraft. if this is the target, as we were screaming buy at 32 dutch 30,000 mph, we took an image, but the spacecraft only had time to capture one row. unless the frames were perfectly centred on the target, we would have missed part or potentially all of it. because it is a stretch goal, we wanted to try it. we will find out later. but the images that will start to come down this week will reveal some of the

basic geology and structure of ultima for us, and we will start writing our first scientific paper next week. applause lisa grossman, from science news. the whole idea of visiting the object was to study something very primitive and old. does no one is rough bowling pin shaped tell you anything about the conditions there? it certainly does. how these objects come together, how they are built up, eitherfrom clumps come together, how they are built up, either from clumps of material that come together, versus colliding fragments, for example, we hope to be able to tell from looking at the details on the images. in addition, just the number of features on the surface, the number of craters. this

thing has been sitting at a large distance from the sun for 4.6 billion years. the service could have been pummelled by material over the age of the solar system. producing craters. or not. if this object, for some reason, there is a process that causes the surface to change over time, it would wipe out the craters. these are the kind of things that will tell us but what was going on in the early solar system. we will stay here in the audience. hello, iam we will stay here in the audience. hello, i am from launch pad astronomy. i would like to ask the team, how might you be able to assess ultima's mass, with its rotation, potential satellites or

other techniques? the ultimate way to get that would be if it has satellites and we can determine their orbits. from that, we can use kepler's laws. if it doesn't have satellites, we don't have a direct way of doing that. we do expect to be to determine its shape entirely, with pretty good accuracy. so, we will get its volume. we will not be able to determine the mass unless it has a satellite. we flew by at a distance where the gravity did not bend the spacecraft trajectory enough to be detectable, even with the exquisite tracking techniques that nasa has. corey powell, discovery magazine. what is the timescale for some of the specific signs goals were getting the data? especially for getting the spectrometer data that will tell you things like composition, and whether it you will know if the radar experiment was a success or not.

what is the timescale for finding these things? well, this mission has always been about delayed gratification. it took us 12 years to sell it, five years to build it, nine years to get the first target. so, you will have to wait a little bit. we're going to be getting greater data this week. next week, the spacecraft is in solar conjunction, which means that we cannot communicate to download more data because of radio interference from the solar corona. following that, the middle ofjanuary, we will pick up the data transmit again and we have made a very detailed plan over the next three months of the first data sets that we wanted to get to the ground, in what order we wa nt get to the ground, in what order we want to send them to the ground, and we are starting with our highest priority objectives of mapping the service, looking for satellites and rings and mapping the surface composition. when i say mapping the service, we do it half a dozen different ways. we map it with a panchromatic camera, with the ralph colour camera, we map it from

different angles to get stereo. some of those datasets will start to come to the ground after we get back in business in mid—january and across the next couple of months. the bonus objectives, like the radar experiment that you spoke about, thatis experiment that you spoke about, that is going to come much later. it is very far down the list and we ta ke is very far down the list and we take this very seriously, this business of space flight, even though the spacecraft has performed perfectly for 13 years since it was launched. there is always the chance that something could go amiss. we wa nt that something could go amiss. we want to start with the highest priority objectives and start moving to the second highest, and only pick up to the second highest, and only pick up the bonus objectives at the end. so you have to have some of that delayed gratification love that our team has. could you perhaps give us an idea of what the science team is going to be doing over the next few days? obviously the first data will

be coming down tonight, how long will the team stay together here? will you break while the spacecraft is in solar conjunction and reconvene? yes, and hal might want to add something to this. for the re st of to add something to this. for the rest of this week, we will be working very long days, as we did yesterday. i have meetings with the science team until 10pm east coast time, and then we will be back at it first thing tomorrow, and again each day this week through friday night. then we will take a break with the solar conjunction. we come back together as a science team on the 15th to start working on the data again. that was a press conference from nasa, great excitement from the scientists, because they have had confirmation that the new horizons probe has made contact with earth to confirm a successful flyby of the icy worlds known as ultima thule and

it is 6.5 billion kilometres away. 4 billion miles away. it is the most distant ever flyby of an object. brazil's new president, jair bolsonaro, is being sworn into office at a ceremony in the capital, brasilia shortly. these are the live pictures as he heads to the inaugriation. the country's first far—right leader since the end of military rule the motorcade has taken him from his home and is heading towards congress. he is the first far right leader since the end of military rule in the 1980s. he is a pretty controversial figure. rule in the 1980s. he is a pretty controversialfigure. seemed to be pretty divisive, with some of the comments he made during his campaign. he is accused of making racist, homophobic and misogynistic

remarks, which have angered many people. he is there, as we can see, in the car, with his wife, michelle, heading towards congress in brasilia. you can see a lot of the ceremony, with the horses. you can hear the ceremony, with the horses. you can hearthe admiring ceremony, with the horses. you can hear the admiring crowds there. there is no doubt about the enthusiasm from those that have turned out. he entered the nickname trump of the tropics, and his campaign was based around ending corruption in brazil. he won the presidential election in october by a wide margin. you can see his security detail, running to keep up alongside the vehicle. it looks like he is still arriving at congress,

with the ceremony due to start in the next few minutes. we know that the next few minutes. we know that the secretary of state mike pompeo is representing the us at the inauguration. benjamin netanyahu from israel, and hungary's prime minister viktor 0rban is the only leaderfrom the eu minister viktor 0rban is the only leader from the eu set to attend. bolsonaro has been scathing of the left—wing governments in places like venezuela, and cancelled their invitations. bolsonaro is 63, he has very close ties to the military and served himself as a paratrooper. he rose to the rank of captain. set to walk along the red carpet,

into congress for the inauguration ceremony. great excitement from the crowds, who have turned out in brasilia to welcome the new brazilian president. jair bolsonaro, set to be sworn in as president of brazil, having won the election back in october. now time for a look at the weather. hello. 2018 finished on a rather cloudy, but relatively mild note. however, now we are into 2019, the weather has brightened up for a number of us. and the reason, well,

we've got this weak cold front that has been pushing southward today. cooler air following, yes, but there have been more breaks in the cloud. so, more in the way of sunshine. there is that weak cold front, still bringing an odd spit of rain over the next few hours. sunshine for northern england, southern and western scotland, and we have seen showers across the north—east. those showers will continue overnight as well. one or two showers possible down the north sea coast. where the cloud comes inland, it will probably just about stay frost free. however, further west, with lighter wind and clear skies, there will be a widespread frost around, even in the towns and cities. in the countryside, i reckon scotland could get down to about —6, maybe some —55 in wales and northern england to watch out for. so, a cold start, a frosty start to wednesday. more of that sunshine to go around, so a decent kind of day apart from the chill. a bit more in a way of cloud around some of these north sea coasts. that cloud could bring a few isolated light showers, perhaps one or two clipping into lincolnshire. one or two in norfolk. even here, it should stay largely fine and dry, with sunny spells. temperatures down on those of today. three to seven celsius, it will feel a little on the chilly side. high pressure stays across the uk, then, over the next few days, but at the same time a plunge

of cold arctic air spreads in across eastern europe, with some snow, even to lower levels in parts of greece, would you believe it. yes, it does look like it will be cold and snowy there. something to watch out for over the next few days. meanwhile, high—pressure stays with us. that keeps our weather fine and dry for most areas. a few showers continuing to work down the southern north sea, perhaps running into parts of kent as we go through thursday. we will probably start to see a little bit more in the way of cloud across western scotland, along with a greater risk of some mist and fog patches here. for friday, it's a case of spot the difference. there are a few subtle differences here and there, the dry weather for most of us, still some sunshine, still cold and frosty to start the day. probably a few more fog patches, again, for western scotland. it is here where we are starting to see some milder air pushing in. highs of 9 degrees in stornoway. still quite cold further south for england and wales, with temperatures continuing to struggle somewhat. however, as we head into the weekend and the early part of next week, there is a tendency for it to turn a little bit cloudier, with temperatures getting back closer to normal. this is bbc news.

i'm vicki young. the headlines at five: a terror investigation is launched after three people including a police officer are stabbed at manchester's victoria station. my thoughts are very much with the couple who are still being treated in hospitalfor their very serious injuries. and of course with the brave british transport police officer that was stabbed during the attack. there it is. meet ultima! signals from the nasa space probe new horizons confirm it has successfully flown past icy mass ultima thule — this is an image of the most distant object every explored in the solar system. as we speak, right now, signals from the spacecraft are coming back across the solar system at the