Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Glitch Halts New Horizons Operations As It Nears Pluto

Posted by samzenpus on from the phone-home dept.

An anonymous reader writes: NASA says their New Horizons probe suffered a temporary communication breakdown on Saturday, 10 days before it's supposed to fly past Pluto. The mission team is working to restore normal communications. "Full recovery is expected to take from one to several days," NASA wrote in a status report on Saturday. "New Horizons will be temporarily unable to collect science data during that time."

2 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. From Unmannedspaceflight.com by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

    Link

    Steve5304: Rumors that Contact with new horizons has been lost again or was never regained. Unconfirmed

    Alan Stern: Such rumors are untrue. The bird is communicating nominally.

    Alan Stern is the director of the New Horizons mission. So no worries. :) You can see that two way communication is in progress here at the Canberra dish.

    This was a really minor glitch and will have no impact on the mission as a whole. There weren't even any significant observations planned for today.

    (As a side note, the closer we get to Pluto and the more we see of it (dark band at the bottom is around the equator), the more it's starting to remind me of an airless Titan :) )

    --
    Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
  2. UPDATE: NASA issued a statement - it's good. by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 5, Informative

    UPDATE: NASA issued a statement at about 19:30 PT / 22:30 ET July 5 / 02:30 UT July 6 saying that the cause of the safe mode is understood, and that New Horizons will resume science operations on July 7:

    NASA’s New Horizons mission is returning to normal science operations after a July 4 anomaly and remains on track for its July 14 flyby of Pluto.

    The investigation into the anomaly that caused New Horizons to enter “safe mode” on July 4 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.”

    http://www.planetary.org/blogs...