Pluto craft wakes from hibernation today
By Deborah Byrd in Space | September 11, 2017
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft – which visited Pluto in July, 2015 – was placed in hibernation on April 7, 2017. The craft is set to be awoken today (September 11, 2017). In the meantime, the science and mission operations teams have been developing detailed command loads for New Horizon’s next encounter, a nine-day flyby of the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 on New Year’s Day, 2019. Among other things, the mission has now set the flight plan and the distance for closest approach, aiming to come three times closer to MU69 than it famously flew past Pluto in 2015.
http://earthsky.org/space/new-horizons-ends-hibernation-sept-11-2017-flight-plan
