After suffering from a technical anomaly on July 4, NASA confirms that New Horizons, the Pluto-bound spacecraft, is back on track for its historic mission. CDA News reported that the piano-sized craft suffered a temporary communication breakdown for 80 minutes and switched to its back-up computer system. It went into a protective safe mode causing quite a stir over the weekend, putting scientific observations on hold for three days.
The $728 million NASA mission is meant to provide the first real observations of the mysterious dwarf planet that resides on the edge of the solar system. New Horizons has been traveling towards Pluto for nine years, and the historic flyby, July 14, is in sight. By July 15, the public should have access to an image of Pluto on par with shots of the planet Earth taken from space, according to The Washington Post.
The U.S. space agency reports that things are back to normal and that New Horizons will not even have to change its mission plans, which would have been the case had there been any hardware or software damage during the on-board anomaly. Alan Stern, principal investigator of the mission expressed that in terms of science, the slight hiccup will not change an “A-plus even into an A.”
NASA explained that New Horizons suffered a glitch when it strained its processing power by working on two tasks simultaneously. The probe was creating a second copy of its sequence commands for its flyby while also compressing previously acquired data to make space for its future finds. The two tasks proved too much to handle for the Pluto-bound craft. Glen Fountain, the mission’s project manager said that the probe did exactly what it is programmed to do. It went into safe mode and sent a distress call back to Earth.
NBC News reports that New Horizons is now loaded and locked for its epic July 14 flyby of Pluto. The start of the encounter mode means that the craft will plow ahead on its predetermined course, coming within 12,500 kilometers of Pluto’s surface at 7:49 a.m. ET on July 14. The switch also means that science observations are resuming, and it should not be long before fresh images of the dwarf planet and its entourage of moons starts popping up again. If it suffers any glitch, the probe is programmed to reboot itself and resume tasks without intervention from the Mission Control team.
The New Horizons probe is headed for flyby as it bids to send up-close-and-personal images of Pluto. NASA celebrates as the probe officially began its flyby sequence. According to Mail Online, it is hoped that one of the first images could shed light on what the dark alien spots on the dwarf planet’s surface are.
By Anila Maring
Photo by Kevin Gill – Creative Commons License