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IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration

Spacecraft Glitch Won't Affect Pluto Flyby, NASA Says

• http://www.scientificamerican.com

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will be ready for its epic Pluto flyby next week despite a recent glitch, mission team members say.

New Horizons went into a precautionary "safe mode" on Saturday (July 4) after experiencing an anomaly, but the problem did not turn out to be serious. New Horizons' handlers say the probe should be back to normal science operations by Tuesday (July 7), exactly one week before it performs the first-ever flyby of Pluto.

"The investigation into the anomaly that caused New Horizons to enter 'safe mode' on July 4 has concluded that no hardware or software fault occurred on the spacecraft," mission team members wrote in an update Sunday (July 5). "The underlying cause of the incident was a hard-to-detect timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence that occurred during an operation to prepare for the close flyby. No similar operations are planned for the remainder of the Pluto encounter."

If New Horizons does indeed bounce back fully as planned on Tuesday, the glitch's effect on the mission's science return will be miminal, team members said.


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