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posted by janrinok on Sunday July 05 2015, @11:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the change-phone-provider dept.

NASA's mission to Pluto lost contact with ground controllers http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2015/07/05/nasa-loses-contact-with-new-horizons-pluto-spacecraft-enters-safe-mode/ and went into "safe mode" when contact was re-established.

Ten days before NASA 's New Horizons spacecraft was due to make its closest approach to Pluto, the space agency reports that at 1:54 PM EDT on the afternoon of July 4th local U.S. time, it lost contact with the $700 million unmanned flyby mission for more than an hour and twenty minutes. Controllers were able to regain a signal from the probe via NASA's Deep Space Network at 3:15 PM. EDT, but as a result, the spacecraft's systems have entered safe mode until mission engineers can diagnose the problem.

Of course, New Horizons is way out there, which makes communications difficult.

Recovery from the event is inherently hamstrung due to the 9-hour, round trip communication delay that the agency says "results from operating a spacecraft almost 3 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) from Earth.

Fly-by is scheduled to take place on July 14th. Can't help but wonder if this is not revenge for being demoted to a dwarf planet.


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 06 2015, @03:24AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 06 2015, @03:24AM (#205471) Journal

    Professional envy, I guess

    Because, you know, in the mind of the reporters the mission's objective is to take pictures for them to have something to report about; pretty much as their human counterparts - the photojournalists - do.
    Except that neither reporters nor photojournalists receive a $700mils/mission to do it; so maybe it's a "heads should roll" type of thinking?

    (grin)

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2015, @04:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2015, @04:56AM (#205485)
    But they don't get shot five billion kilometres into interplanetary space to take pictures.
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 06 2015, @05:11AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 06 2015, @05:11AM (#205491) Journal
      But nobody asked them if they want to.
      (inferring by the intellectual capabilities of some of them, we may see risen hands)
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