On July 4, 2015, NASA lost contact with the New Horizons Pluto probe for over an hour. For some unknown reason, the probe shut down to Safe Mode and began to produce telemetry for NASA to reacquire contact. Contact was reestablished, and the probe appears to be in good health, but science operations are suspended.
Fortunately, the last trajectory manoeuvres before encounter have all been done, so the spacecraft is still on course for its July 14 flyby of Pluto. However, it is not taking pictures at the moment. Few pictures were planned for July 4 and 5, but with only 9 days to Pluto, getting science operations back to normal is a nail-biter.
You can monitor the real time status of communications with various NASA spacecraft at the Deep Space Network Now web page. New Horizons is the antenna labeled NHPC. Here is a screen shot.
** UPDATE**
http://www.nasa.gov/...
NASA’s New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations
NASA’s New Horizons mission is returning to normal science operations after a July 4 anomaly and remains on track for its July 14 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. 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.
“I’m pleased that our mission team quickly identified the problem and assured the health of the spacecraft,” said Jim Green, NASA’s Director of Planetary Science. “Now – with Pluto in our sights – we’re on the verge of returning to normal operations and going for the gold.”
(A timing bug in the recently uploaded command sequence. That sounds like a long, sleepless holiday weekend spent in the JPL cubicles...)
Mon Jul 06, 2015 at 1:53 PM PT: As long as the science sequence is back online tomorrow, July 7 2015, as currently planned, the only losses will be some light curve data for Nix and Hydra, and jumpy-looking approach animations.