NASA’s New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations • Hacker News Board

Re: NASA’s New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations

#11

Post by BinaryIdiot » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

Figs wrote: post #6

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #5

Ever since I was a wee kid I wondered what Pluto looked like. When the news came that there were issues with New Horizons just DAYS away from finally coming close to Pluto my heart sank. It's very good news to hear it's back and will be good for the fly-by. I'm so excited to finally see pictures up close to this planet / dwarf planet!

You can already see some of the recent pictures they've taken here: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/index.php?page=1

Thanks! I already monitor a bunch of twitter accounts to see the latest but didn't think to look for a centralized place. Bookmarking!

Re: NASA’s New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations

#12

Post by Bedon292 » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

Figs wrote: post #6

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #5

Ever since I was a wee kid I wondered what Pluto looked like. When the news came that there were issues with New Horizons just DAYS away from finally coming close to Pluto my heart sank. It's very good news to hear it's back and will be good for the fly-by. I'm so excited to finally see pictures up close to this planet / dwarf planet!

You can already see some of the recent pictures they've taken here: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/index.php?page=1

That is an awesome link, thanks. It is really mind blowing to look at the target distance for each of them and see how fast it is approaching Pluto.

Re: NASA’s New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations

#13

Post by sohkamyung » Tue, Jul 07, 2015, 3:21 AM UTC

Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society has posted a summary of the press briefing held about the New Horizons Anomaly [ http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/0706140... ]. Her summary:

- The anomaly related to the main computer being asked to do two computationally intensive tasks at once, and they were more than the computer could handle, so New Horizons switched to the backup computer, entered safe mode, stopped science, and called for help from Earth.

- On Earth, engineers quickly understood the problem.

- It is not a problem that can happen during the encounter.

- Mission leadership chose to suspend science activities to focus on recovery efforts.

- Science activities will resume on July 7 at 9:45 PT / 12:45 ET / 16:45 UT, Earth received time (so, about 12:15 UT, spacecraft event time).

- 30 planned science observations were lost between July 3 and 7, none of them required for the top-level science goals of the mission.

- The anomaly is no reason to doubt that New Horizons will perform its encounter science as planned.