By 
July 5th, 2015
New Horizons: Closing in on Distant Pluto
Credit: NASA/APL
Update: New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations…
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.
Closing in on its prey NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft en route to Pluto experienced an anomaly on U.S. Independence Day – July 4th.
The glitch led to a loss of communication with Earth. However, communication has since been reestablished and the spacecraft is healthy.
According to a NASA statement: The autonomous autopilot on board the spacecraft “recognized a problem” and – as it’s programmed to do in such a situation – switched from the main to the backup computer.
The autopilot placed the spacecraft in “safe mode,” and commanded the backup computer to reinitiate communication with Earth. New Horizons then began to transmit telemetry to help engineers diagnose the problem.
The glitch lasted from 1:54 p.m. EDT to 3:15 p.m. EDT when communications were regained.
A New Horizons Anomaly Review Board (ARB) was convened to identify the problem.
Work is underway to return New Horizons to its original flight plan.
Pluto and Charon surfaces in living color.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
Due to the 9-hour, round trip communication delay that results from operating a spacecraft almost 3 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) from Earth, full recovery is expected to take from one to several days.
During this time, New Horizons will be temporarily unable to collect science data.
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