The spacecraft operators at Johns Hopkins University loaded an upgrade to the operating software of the main computer, as part of the second annual maintenance of the spacecraft that will reach Pluto in seven years
Seven years before the expected meeting with the dwarf planet Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft awoke from its hibernation for the second annual check of all its systems. The spacecraft and the crew overseeing it from Earth will also operate it for three months during which it will photograph Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. But their first task was to upload and upgrade the version of the software that activates the spacecraft's command and information handling systems.
"The brain surgery was successful," said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern. "The new software - which is responsible for instructing the rest of the spacecraft's systems on how to carry out the commands and collect and store data - is installed on New Horizons' main computer and is working properly. And we did all this processing when the spacecraft is 1.62 billion kilometers away from home." Stern summary.
The mission's operations team at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland, uploaded the software to the spacecraft's computers by radio through NASA's Deep Space Network transmitters. Over the next ten days, the team will broadcast new software to the spacecraft's two autonomous control and navigation systems.
Alice Bowman, director of the spacecraft's operations team at Johns Hopkins University, says the spacecraft and its computer are in good condition. "The new software has fixed some bugs and enriched the ways in which the system works, based on what we have learned operating the spacecraft in the nearly three years since its launch," she said. "We tweaked the various systems inside the spacecraft so that they would be ready to support the return flight to Pluto and the moon Charon planned for next summer."
New Horizons is over 200 milli kilometers beyond the orbit of Saturn, and about 11 astronomical units (1.62 billion km) from the Sun. It is gulping about one and a half million kilometers per day on its way to Pluto.
The second annual inspection of the spacecraft will continue until mid-December.
8 תגובות
light:
it's all relative.
If you take into account the movement of the Earth (on which your Mazda is located) around the sun, the movement of the sun around the center of the galaxy, etc., you will realize that you actually travel more kilometers every day.
A million and a half kilometers per day...
I wonder how long it will take me to do this in my Mazda 3...
Click here to
Who is interested?
To my father
You don't seem to be in good health.
I hope I'm wrong.
Is there a reason for this?
"Kinpagno" is good
I'm literally counting down the days until I get to Pluto. Since I was a child I dreamed of this moment. Only 7 more years!