The New Horizons spacecraft is on track for a close encounter with Pluto next week after overcoming a glitch that had scientists worried.
On Saturday, New Horizons experienced what NASA described as an “anomaly” that left the spacecraft out of touch with mission controllers for 81 minutes.
Alan Stern, New Horizons’ principal investigator at the Boulder-based Planetary Science Directorate of the Southwest Research Institute, described the problem as a “speed bump” that disrupted scheduled data collection.
But the glitch will have no effect on the spacecraft’s flyby of Pluto on July 14, Stern said. Normal science operations were to recommence Tuesday.
“New Horizons is (now) operating flawlessly, on course, and not only is the spacecraft operating flawlessly, but so are all of the instruments in the payload,” Stern said Monday in a media teleconference.
The grand-piano-sized craft, launched 9½ years ago, has traveled nearly 3 billion miles on a $728 million mission to explore the little-known dwarf planet and its moons.
Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager from Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, said the spacecraft experienced a data-collection problem and placed itself in “safe mode,” which it is programmed to do. That action led to a temporary loss of communication with Earth.
Stern said New Horizons stopped collecting data Saturday afternoon and missed scheduled data collection periods on Sunday and Monday.
Mission controllers decided to sacrifice those opportunities to make sure that the spacecraft is operating properly during its closest contact with Pluto, passing within 7,800 miles on July 14.
“We made the decision to focus on the cake and not worry too much about the icing,” Stern said.
A total of 30 scheduled “observations” were lost, he said, representing 6 percent of the 496 observations scheduled between July 4 and July 16.
However, Stern said, the data lost over the weekend were not nearly as important as those to be collected next week when New Horizons flies closer to Pluto.
He said that on a weighted basis, the lost observations accounted for only about 1 percent of the data scheduled to be collected over a 13-day period.
The nearly decade-long mission, which has attracted plenty of attention from the scientific community, also has produced moments of pop-culture levity.
When the newest of Pluto’s five moons was discovered in 2012, scientists called it Styx, in following with the practice of using Greek and Roman mythological names.
In a nod to the classic rock band of the same name, New Horizons officials invited Styx musicians last week for a tour of Mission Control at Johns Hopkins.
“When Pluto’s moon was named, it was for the river Styx, but no kidding, we really had you guys in mind, too,” Stern told band members Tommy Shaw, Lawrence Gowan and Todd Sucherman.
The band visited while its hit single “Come Sail Away” was piped into the Mission Control auditorium.
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948, sraabe@denverpost.com or twitter.com/steveraabedp
