On July 7 local time, NASA announced that after nearly a year of dormancy, the American probe New Horizons has been awakened. Currently, the probe is located 9.5 billion kilometers from Earth and has returned to normal operation, ready to send scientific data collected in the Kuiper Belt back to ground stations.
The statement indicates that, in order to save resources, the New Horizons spacecraft entered a dormant state on August 7th of last year. During the spacecraft’s dormancy, ground operators will not send any commands or retrieve data. However, the spacecraft will continue to collect data using its scientific instruments, including the solar wind analyzer, high-energy particle spectrometer, and other devices equipped to measure solar plasma.
On June 23 this year, flight controllers at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, USA, confirmed that New Horizons carried out a wake-up operation according to pre-uploaded instructions, successfully ending its 321-day hibernation period.
Conceptual image of the "New Horizons" probe from NASA
"APL 'New Horizons' Mission Manager Alice Bowman stated that the probe will send status reports to ground control centers through NASA's deep space network every week, "and during its hibernation period, each weekly report was 'green', meaning all devices on board were operating properly."
She revealed that as the New Horizons spacecraft resumes normal operation, the mission team will first obtain data on the health and safety of the probe, and then download the data collected by the scientific instruments. In about three weeks, the ultraviolet imaging spectrometer onboard the probe will observe the distribution of hydrogen in the outer solar layer, and other scientific instruments will continue their measurement work.
The New Horizons spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, in 2006. Its main mission was to explore Pluto and the asteroid population in the Kuiper Belt. In 2015, New Horizons flew past Pluto and its moon, Pluto’s Moon, becoming the only spacecraft to visit Pluto’s system to date.
In 2019, the ‘New Horizon’ spacecraft completed its second major scientific mission, flying over the Kuiper Belt asteroid Arrokoth. NASA stated that this is the farthest celestial body ever visited by a human spacecraft to date.
As of now, the New Horizon spacecraft is located 9.5 billion kilometers from Earth, traveling at a speed of 483 million kilometers per year towards the edge of the solar system.
