American space agency NASA’s spacecraft New Horizons recently sent back home the closet ever images of a small object located in the Kuiper Belt. The craft snapped four pictures, scientists associated with the mission said.

New Horizons, which made history after making the closest ever flyby of Pluto this July, captured images of 1994 JR1 on November 2.

According to mission scientists, 1994 JR1 is a 90-mile-wide (150 kilometers) object in Kuiper Belt. The craft pictured the small object from a distance of 170 million miles (280 million km).

Scientists associated with New Horizions’ mission said, “This sets a record, by a factor of at least 15, for the closest-ever picture of a small body in the Kuiper Belt, the solar system's 'third zone' beyond the inner, rocky planets and outer, icy gas giants”.

When the New Horizons captured the images of 1994 JR1, it was located about 3.3 billion miles (5.3 billion km) from the sun. The photos taken using its long-range camera justify the ability of the craft and show what kind of work New Horizons could do during the next few years.

NASA’s New Horizons is on a mission to explore and study a different Kuiper Belt object (KBO), the roughly 30-mile-wide (48 km) 2014 MU69, during a close flyby in January 2019. The probe will start to approach its target only if NASA approves and funds a potential extended mission for the probe.

Mission scientists hope that such observation in the deep space can help a lot to spread light on the solar system’s early days.