Dwarf planet ahead (Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Southwest Research Institute)
A BUSY to-do list can frazzle your brain – even if you’re a spacecraft.
Last Saturday NASA lost touch with its New Horizons probe, which is in the final days of its decade-long journey to Pluto. About 80 minutes later, mission controllers regained contact with the craft, which had gone into “safe mode”, where it stops collecting data. The incident was a one-off and won’t threaten any of the mission’s science, says NASA.
Advertisement
“The computer was trying to do two things at the same time,” says Glen Fountain of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.
As it loaded instructions for the fly-by, New Horizons was also compressing old data to make room for new observations. This caused its processor to overload, sending the craft into safe mode.
Engineers spent the weekend fixing the problem. “I am quite confident that this kind of event will not happen again,” says Fountain.
For live coverage of the 14 July Pluto fly-by, visit bit.ly/NSpluto.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Pluto probe hiccup”
Topics:
