NASA Awakens Pluto Probe From Hibernation

2014-12-09 37

Scientists have switched the Pluto probe from hibernation mode to active, and signals from New Horizons were received by the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland about four and a half hours after they were sent.

In January of 2006, NASA launched a space probe called New Horizons to travel nearly 3 billion miles away from Earth to Pluto.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland switched the probe from hibernation mode to active. The first signals from the probe were received by a large radio antenna in Australia, about four and a half hours after they were sent.

Since being launched, the explorer has spent around two thirds of its time in sleep mode to save energy, but every few months it has been turned on to make sure it’s still working.

It was also programmed to send a weekly signal letting scientists know it's still functional but idle, not broken or dead.

The probe will stay active for the last leg of the journey to Pluto, where it will send back pictures and observational data on the dwarf planet and its five moons.

Project scientist Hal Weaver, of the Applied Physics Laboratory, is quoted as saying, “New Horizons is on a journey to a new class of planets we've never seen, in a place we've never been before.”

After observing Pluto, the probe has plans to visit the Kuiper Belt, which is a ring of cosmic material located outside of the orbit of Neptune.