Horizons

04 Apr

NASA’s New Horizons set to meet next flyby target

Washington: Continuing on its path through the outer regions of the solar system, NASAs New Horizons spacecraft has now travelled half the distance from Pluto. It is heading towards its next target - 2014 MU69 - which is the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) and the probe will fly past it on January 1, 2019, NASA said in a statement late on Monday.The spacecraft was 782.45 million kms beyond Pluto and the same distance from MU69. "It's fantastic to have completed half the journey to our next flyby; that flyby will set the record for the most distant world ever explored in…

11 Feb

New Horizons probe healthy after hiccup: NASA

Washington: NASA said its New Horizons spacecraft is healthy and operating normally after just over 24 hours in a protective "safe mode" -- the result of a command-loading error that occurred this week. The spacecraft is designed to automatically transition to safe mode under certain anomalous conditions to protect itself from harm. In safe mode, the spacecraft suspends its timeline of activities and keeps its antenna pointed toward Earth to listen for instructions from the Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. "Our rapid recovery was supported by other NASA missions that provided…