In Case You Were Worried about New Horizons
Just ten days away from Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft had an "anomaly" yesterday and went into "safe-mode." It switched control to its backup computer and tried to establish contact with Earth.
This made a lot of us anxious, despite assurances that the spacecraft was probably fine.
NASA has announced that recovery is going well and New Horizons "remains on track for its July 14 flyby of Pluto:"Preparations are ongoing to resume the originally planned science operations on July 7 and to conduct the entire close flyby sequence as planned. The mission science team and principal investigator have concluded that the science observations lost during the anomaly recovery do not affect any primary objectives of the mission, with a minimal effect on lesser objectives.
Nothing like a little suspense to make a flyby more exciting. Time to get some sleep.
This made a lot of us anxious, despite assurances that the spacecraft was probably fine.
NASA has announced that recovery is going well and New Horizons "remains on track for its July 14 flyby of Pluto:"Preparations are ongoing to resume the originally planned science operations on July 7 and to conduct the entire close flyby sequence as planned. The mission science team and principal investigator have concluded that the science observations lost during the anomaly recovery do not affect any primary objectives of the mission, with a minimal effect on lesser objectives.
Nothing like a little suspense to make a flyby more exciting. Time to get some sleep.