NASA-International Space Station

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the smallest object ever seen in visible light in the Kuiper Belt, a enormous ring of icy debris that is surrounding the outer rim of the solar system just beyond Neptune, NASA said.

The object found by Hubble is only 3,200 feet across and a massive 4.2 billion miles away. The smallest Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) seen before in reflected light is roughly 30 miles across, or 50 times larger.

This is the first observational proof for a population of comet-sized bodies in the Kuiper Belt that are being ground down through collisions. The Kuiper Belt is therefore collisionally developing, meaning that the region's icy content has been modified over the past 4.5 billion years.

The object detected by Hubble is so faded, at 35th magnitude; it is 100 times dimmer than what the Hubble can see directly, according to NASA.