New Horizons Technical Problem Identified; Operations Will Resume On July 7th
The mankind is at an important point in the history of space exploration. On 14th July, NASA's deep space exploration mission 'New Horizons' will fly nearest to Pluto, gathering all the important scientific data and photographs of the planet. The spaceship has been in flight for almost 10 years now and has performed well. Now that it's just 10 days away from the much awaited flyby, New Horizons has experienced a technical problem.
NASA made an #-Link-Snipped-# that the spacecraft faced an anomaly that resulted into loss of communication with the ground station. NASA engineers have however established the communication and have confirmed that the spacecraft is healthy. The onboard computers have recognized a problem and as programmed, have put the spacecraft into 'safe mode'.
Image Credit: NASA
The autopilot systems on-board have switched from the main computer to the backup to re-establish communication with NASA's base station. The spacecraft has began transmitting telemetry that will help engineers diagnose the problem. [Update: Problem has been identified]
The engineering team is working to get the system back on the track and start a recovery plan to put the New Horizons on its original flight plan. But the things are surely not just as simple. The spacecraft is speeding away from Earth and is already ~4.9 billion kilometers away. It takes radio signals about 9 hours to travel to the spacecraft and back from it.
NASA said that the full recovery may take one to several days and unfortunately, the spacecraft will not be able to collect any scientific data during this period. We all hope that the engineers will restore all the systems before the flyby.
Update: It's expected that the New Horizons will resume operations on July 7. WJim Green, NASA's director of Planetary Science has said that the engineering team has identified the problem as 'hard-to-detect' timing flaw in the spacecraft's command sequence. We'll keep you posted on further developments. Stay tuned!
Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
NASA made an #-Link-Snipped-# that the spacecraft faced an anomaly that resulted into loss of communication with the ground station. NASA engineers have however established the communication and have confirmed that the spacecraft is healthy. The onboard computers have recognized a problem and as programmed, have put the spacecraft into 'safe mode'.
Image Credit: NASA
The autopilot systems on-board have switched from the main computer to the backup to re-establish communication with NASA's base station. The spacecraft has began transmitting telemetry that will help engineers diagnose the problem. [Update: Problem has been identified]
The engineering team is working to get the system back on the track and start a recovery plan to put the New Horizons on its original flight plan. But the things are surely not just as simple. The spacecraft is speeding away from Earth and is already ~4.9 billion kilometers away. It takes radio signals about 9 hours to travel to the spacecraft and back from it.
NASA said that the full recovery may take one to several days and unfortunately, the spacecraft will not be able to collect any scientific data during this period. We all hope that the engineers will restore all the systems before the flyby.
Update: It's expected that the New Horizons will resume operations on July 7. WJim Green, NASA's director of Planetary Science has said that the engineering team has identified the problem as 'hard-to-detect' timing flaw in the spacecraft's command sequence. We'll keep you posted on further developments. Stay tuned!
Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
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