After giving us all a heart attack during the weekend, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft seems to be recovering. On July 4, NASA reported that New Horizons – which is just days away from a historic encounter with Pluto after nine years of travel – was experiencing an anomaly. The craft went into safe mode and lost communications with Earth for an hour.
The $728 million mission is meant to give us our first real observations of Pluto, the mysterious dwarf planet that sits on the edge of our solar system. It’s been zipping towards its goal since 2006, and the end – July 14 – is in sight. By July 15, the public should have access to an image of Pluto on-par with shots of Earth taken from space.
But this hiccup is a reminder that no space mission is a guarantee – and July 14th’s flyby will require all the stars to align.
For now, NASA reports, things are back to normal. In fact, the spacecraft won’t even have to change its science mission plans, which would have been the case had any software or hardware been damaged during the anomaly. Normal science operations will recommence on Tuesday, and mission scientists say that nothing vital will be lost because of the down time.
“In terms of science, it won’t change an A-plus even into an A,” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said in a statement.
According to a statement from NASA, the anomaly was caused by an issue in a programming sequence – part of New Horizon’s final maneuvers as it prepares for a flawless flyby – that won’t be repeated. And while some were spooked by NASA’s July 4 statement that the craft had to be returned to its “original flight plan” – which some took as an indication that the spacecraft had been knocked off course – NASA was referring to the science plan, not a physical trajectory.
