In nine short days, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will make history by becoming the first spacecraft to fly past Pluto. Unfortunately on July 4, just days before the team was to send the approach command to the vehicle, an anomaly occurred at 1:54pm EST and communications with the spacecraft were lost. Communications were quickly restored through the deep space network (DSN), with signal confirmation at 3:15pm EDT.
The spacecraft’s autonomous autopilot recognized a problem and switched from the main to the backup computer—as it’s programmed to do. The autopilot then placed the spacecraft in “safe mode,” and commanded the backup computer to reestablish communication with Earth. New Horizons then began to transmit telemetry to help engineers diagnose the problem.
At this point, there's no need to worry. The New Horizons spacecraft is healthy and will likely remain in safe mode until normal operations mode can be restored. But during this time, no science data can be collected.
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