Pluto-Bound Spacecraft Ends Hibernation To Start Mission

An anonymous reader writes NASA's New Horizons spacecraft awoke from hibernation on Saturday and sent a radio confirmation that it had successfully turned itself back on one and a half hours later. The spacecraft has been traveling for nine years across the solar system towards its destination, Pluto. From the article: "In 2006, with New Horizons already on its way, Pluto was stripped of its title as the ninth planet in the solar system and became a dwarf planet, of which more than 1,000 have since been discovered in the Kuiper Belt. With New Horizons approaching Pluto's doorstep, scientists are eager for their first close-up look at this unexplored domain."

Comments

A thousand KBOs discovered, not dwarf planets

[Tim the Gecko]

The article confuses Kuiper Belt Objects (more than one thousand discovered), and dwarf planets. To quote Wikipedia: "The IAU recognizes five bodies as dwarf planets: Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake".

2015 will be a great year for looking at two of these. As well as New Horizons, there is also the Dawn probe on its way to orbit Ceres.

Re:As far as I'm concerned, Pluto is still a plane

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a cartoon character.
- Pluto, ruler of the underworld

Hibernation

[jones_supa]

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft awoke from hibernation on Saturday

Apparently isn't a Linux-based system then...

Re:New photography?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Wikipedia timeline table:
Feb 2015 -- Observations of Pluto begin
5 May 2015 -- Better than Hubble -- Images exceed best Hubble Space Telescope resolution.
14 Jul 2015 -- Flyby of Pluto, Charon, Hydra, Nix, Kerberos and Styx

Re:New photography?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Will this give us some higher resolution photos of the surface to ogle over?

That's the plan.

It is true that we have yet not had high resolution photography of pluto?

Yes.

What is currently known about Plutos composition and is this mission planned to refine knowledge on that?

We know the approximate sizes of Pluto and its moon Charon, their weights (somewhat more accurately, mostly thanks to the fact that Pluto has a heavy moon and Kepler has a third law - without the moon, we'd be screwed!), some surface spectra have been measured (methane, carbon monoxide, nitrogen), and we know that Pluto has a very thin atmosphere that's going to freeze very soon. That's about it...