Uploaded January 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
On Dec. 6, 2014, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft came out of hibernation for the final time in preparation for its historic 2015 encounter with Pluto. New Horizons launched in January 2006; it has spent about two-thirds of its nearly nine-year voyage in hibernation, a power-saving mode that reduced operations costs and wear-and-tear on spacecraft electronics.
The command to “wake” New Horizons this weekend was actually transmitted to the probe in August 2014; the mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) was able to confirm that New Horizons – which is currently more than 2.9 billion miles from Earth, and just 162 million miles from Pluto – had executed those commands at 9:53 p.m. EST on Dec. 6.
Footage from New Horizons Mission Operations, APL, Laurel, Maryland:
- Preparations to receive signal and telemetry from New Horizons through NASA’s Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia.
- Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman confirms data indicating New Horizons had switched from hibernation to “active” mode.
- Playing of commemorative song, “Where My Heart Will Take Me,” recorded for New Horizons by English tenor Russell Watson.
Learn more at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20141206.php
On Dec. 6, 2014, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft came out of hibernation for the final time in preparation for its historic 2015 encounter with Pluto. New Horizons launched in January 2006; it has spent about two-thirds of its nearly nine-year voyage in hibernation, a power-saving mode that reduced operations costs and wear-and-tear on spacecraft electronics.
The command to “wake” New Horizons this weekend was actually transmitted to the probe in August 2014; the mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) was able to confirm that New Horizons – which is currently more than 2.9 billion miles from Earth, and just 162 million miles from Pluto – had executed those commands at 9:53 p.m. EST on Dec. 6.
Footage from New Horizons Mission Operations, APL, Laurel, Maryland:
- Preparations to receive signal and telemetry from New Horizons through NASA’s Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia.
- Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman confirms data indicating New Horizons had switched from hibernation to “active” mode.
- Playing of commemorative song, “Where My Heart Will Take Me,” recorded for New Horizons by English tenor Russell Watson.
Learn more at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20141206.php
