NASA's New Horizons probe woke up today to prep for its next deep space flyby Only six months left until the spacecraft meets up with its next targetBy Loren Grush@lorengrush Jun 5, 2018, 5:46pm EDT /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/59965459/nh_surface.0.jpg)
An artistic rendering of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft |Image: NASA NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Pluto in July of 2015, woke up today from hibernation mode in preparation for its next rendezvous with a space rock at the edge of the Solar System. The vehicle came out of its slumber 3.7 billion miles from Earth, as it’s speeding toward an icy body nicknamed Ultima Thule that orbits the Sun way beyond Neptune. Now that the spacecraft is awake, the mission team has a very full schedule through 2018: the flyby will take place on January 1st, 2019.
New Horizons has been in and out of hibernation mode twice since April of 2017. While in hibernation, the spacecraft basically runs on autopilot, with only its essential components and a few of its instruments powered on. The probe also works off a long list of commands that get uploaded to the spacecraft’s memory before it snoozes off. All of this helps to save wear and tear on the spacecraft, as well as minimize the amount of work that the mission team has to do from the ground.
“We have a small team and when we put the spacecraft into hibernation, it takes less time for us†to operate New Horizons, Alice Bowman, New Horizons’ mission operations manager, tells The Verge. “We can be spending it on developing the command set for the flyby, which is what we were doing.â€
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https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/5/17429698/nasa-new-horizons-ultima-thule-2014-mu69-pluto-flyby
