| Title | Contact Temporarily Lost With New Horizons | |
| Date | Sunday July 05 2015, @11:52PM | |
| Author | janrinok | |
| Topic | ||
| 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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printed from SoylentNews, Contact Temporarily Lost With New Horizons on 2024-04-20 02:44:11