After nine years and a journey of 4.8 billion
kilometres, a NASA probe woke up from hibernation
on Saturday to begin taking a closer look
at Pluto.
The New Horizons probe came out of hibernation
and transmitted a message to Earth.
It awoke at 3pm but is so far away that radio
signals travelling at the speed of light take
four hours and 25 minutes to reach Earth,
so control teams didn't receive the confirmation
until about 9.30pm.
The space craft captured this view of the
giant planet Neptune and it's moon Triton
in July, from a distance of about 2.4 billion
miles.
New Horizons was launched in January 2006
and was in hibernation for 1,873 days, which
is about about two thirds of its journey.
Its hibernation period was to preserve the
craft's electric power and minimize resources
needed to monitor it.
The probe aims to study Pluto, which is an
The probe aims to study Pluto, which is an icy body with
several moons near the outer reaches
of our solar system.
Data on Pluto's topography its largest moon,
Charon, will be collected, giving astronomers
an up-close look at the surfaces that are
difficult to see from Earth.
