New Horizons probe would start its action very soon. The probe is on its way to fly nearby the Pluto and NASA expects it to perform normal scientific operations. The tests are last chance of Pluto to prove that it is not dusky ice ball. The agency recently fixed a technical glitch which resulted into a loss of contact with the Earth station. The problem was quickly detected and restored the probe’s health. NASA’s director of planetary science, Jim Green informed. The Pluto is in the vision of scientist now and everyone is excited about uncovering the mystery of distant planet.
Hard to detect timing flaws was witnessed in the new horizon and it affected the command sequence which needed to initiate on July 14 flyby. The probe was offline for almost one hour and its systems changed its controls to back up computer as the primary one went offline. The protective safe mode connected it back to the Earth station. Engineers are assured of the mission success when the piano sized space probe sent healthy signals. Trouble shooting routine was followed to fix the glitch. The spacecraft is going back to normal slowly. The whole effort is expected to take some days due to massive distance between the command center and space probe. (Almost 5 billion kilometers)
Signals transmitted by Earth station take four and a half hours to reach the spacecraft at the speed of light. The processed response from the spacecraft takes another four and a half hours to reach at the mission control. NASA assured everyone that flaw won’t happen again.
