NASA New Horizons Spacecraft Glitches as it Prepares for Pluto Flyby

The Pluto probe, New Horizons, has returned to normal operations after a strange glitch on July 4. During the fourth, researchers on Earth lost contact with the spacecraft, though they've regained contact since then.

On July 4, the autonomous autopilot on board the spacecraft recognized a problem and switched from the main to the backup computer. The autopilot placed New Horizons in "safe mode" and then commanded the backup computer to reinitiate communication with Earth. New Horizons then began to transmit telemetry to help engineers diagnose the problem.

Now, researchers have investigated the anomaly that caused New Horizons to enter safe mode in the first place. It turns out that no hardware or software fault occurred. Instead, there was a timing flaw in the command sequence that occurred during an operation to prepare the spacecraft for its close flyby of Pluto.

"I'm pleased that our mission team quickly identified the problem and assured the health of the spacecraft," said Jim Green, NASA's Director of Planetary Science, in a news release. "Now-with Pluto in our sights-we're on the verge of returning to normal operations and going for the gold."

Preparations are ongoing to resume the originally planned science operations on July 7 and conduct the entire close flyby sequence as planned. The science operations lost during this particular anomaly won't impact any of the primary objectives of the mission and will only influence lesser objectives slightly.

New Horizon is currently almost 3 billion miles away as it heads toward Pluto. There, even radio signals traveling at the speed of light take 4.5 hours to reach Earth.

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