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After anomaly and temporary loss of communications New Horizons stays on course to Pluto

after-anomaly-and-temporary-loss-of-communications-new-horizons-stays-on-course-to-pluto

After NASA's New Horizons spacecraft suffered an anomaly on July 4, which caused temporary loss of communications, mission control announced today the spacecraft is healthy and it continues on its course toward Pluto for a historic July 14 flyby.

Contact with the spacecraft was lost at 17:34 UTC on July 4, and was regained at 19:15 UTC, through NASA’s Deep Space Network.

During that time the autonomous autopilot on board the spacecraft recognized a problem and, as programmed to do in such a situation, switched from the main to the backup computer. The autopilot placed the spacecraft in “safe mode,” and commanded the backup computer to reinitiate communication with Earth. New Horizons then began to transmit telemetry to help engineers diagnose the problem.

The investigation into the anomaly has concluded that no hardware or software fault occurred on the spacecraft. The underlying cause of the incident was a hard-to-detect timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence that occurred during an operation to prepare for the close flyby. No similar operations are planned for the remainder of the Pluto encounter.

"I'm pleased that our mission team quickly identified the problem and assured the health of the spacecraft," said Jim Green, NASA's Director of Planetary Science. "Now – with Pluto in our sights – we're on the verge of returning to normal operations and going for the gold."

Preparations are ongoing to resume the originally planned science operations on July 7 and to conduct the entire close flyby sequence as planned. The mission science team and principal investigator have concluded that the science observations lost during the anomaly recovery do not affect any primary objectives of the mission, with a minimal effect on lesser objectives.

Adding to the challenge of recovery is the spacecraft's extreme distance from Earth where radio signals, even traveling at light speed, need 4.5 hours to reach Earth. Two-way communication between the spacecraft and its operators requires a nine-hour round trip.

NewHorizons – Johns Hopkins APL home

NewHorizons – NASA home

Where is New Horizons now

Fatured image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

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