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Posted on 07/16/2026 8:07:30 AM PDT by Red Badger
A groundbreaking mission that explored Pluto and distant solar system objects in unprecedented detail has awakened from its longest sleep ever — and it’s 5.9 billion miles (9.5 billion kilometers) from Earth.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft went into a planned hibernation mode on August 7, 2025, and woke up on June 23 using commands stored on its main computer.
The mission’s flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, confirmed that New Horizons is in great shape and ready to transmit a stream of science data gathered during hibernation from its location in the region of icy objects known as the Kuiper Belt.
Pluto is the largest of thousands of frozen, rocky bodies called trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs, that exist in the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our solar system — remnants from its formation 4.5 billion years ago.
In 2015, New Horizons became the first spacecraft to conduct a detailed flyby of Pluto and its moons, which changed scientists’ understanding of the frigid dwarf planet. The spacecraft also carried out an up-close examination of Arrokoth, a snowman-shaped TNO, in 2019.
Since these milestones, New Horizons has continued exploring the mysterious Kuiper Belt — and it’s uncovering surprising revelations.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
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Ping!.............Pluto is trans!.........
Let’s hoist one for our rocket scientists!
Earth to New Horizon: “ET phone home”
I just thought it was just Goofy!
“and it’s uncovering surprising revelations.”
There’s a lot of “there” out there... More than enough to keep us busy for the next couple hundred years as a species.
Quite a remarkable achievement by man and it's still working.
Back lot studio. 😂👍🇺🇸
Launched on January 19, 2006. Could today’s NASA do that?
I read the whole article and it never explains why this particular time was chosen to come out of hibernation.
This is Elon....Wake up you lazy ... or I’ll have a robot replace you.
One of my favorite bands...
The TransNeptunian Orchestra!
The simple fact that its antennas can still find earth from out there. Earth is a needle in a haystack.
Some kind of anniversary
Make Pluto a planet again.
So, if I calculate correctly, it takes a signal almost 9 hours to reach the spacecraft from earth. 18 hours round-trip.
I’m confused; is Pluto a planet again?
Pluto is no longer considered a major planet, but is officially classified as a dwarf planet. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) updated its definition of a planet, requiring a celestial body to clear its neighboring region of other objects.
Because Pluto shares its orbit with other icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt, it was reclassified
No, unfortunately....................
Maybe a scheduled wake-up call.
Wake up, have a look around to see if anything interesting is nearby , if not go back to sleep?.................
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