New Horizons Pluto probe just woke itself up after 321 days of hibernation
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New Horizons Pluto probe just woke itself up after 321 days of hibernation
Good luck getting your PC to do that after lunch
Simon Sharwood
Simon<br>Sharwood
APAC Editor
Published<br>thu 9 Jul 2026 // 07:41 UTC
NASA’s New Horizons probe has woken itself up after 321 days of hibernation.<br>The aerospace agency sent commands to the probe last July, instructing it to commence hibernation on August 7 and then resume activity in July 2026.<br>On July 23, NASA checked to see if New Horizons had obeyed the instruction to wake up and was pleased to find it was online again.
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New Horizons’ main job was to make our first ever visit to Pluto, which it accomplished in 2015, before zipping off to visit a Kuiper Belt object named Arrokoth in 2019.
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At the time of writing, NASA says the probe is 64.04 astronomical units (AU) from Earth, or 9.5 billion km/5.9 billion miles. A quick reminder: A single AU is 93 million miles/150 million kilometers, which we mention because New Horizons has travelled 23.0 AU beyond Arrokoth since its 2019 visit. That’s a greater distance than the 19 AU between the Sun and Uranus.
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NASA says it puts New Horizons into hibernation mode to save resources when it’s cruising and doesn’t bother sending it any commands or downloading data while the craft is dozing.<br>The agency is content with that arrangement because scientists have observed no other Kuiper Belt object the craft can visit.<br>NASA therefore devised an extended mission plan that calls for New Horizons to gather data about the Sun’s interactions with the outer reaches of the solar system – but to do so passively and hoard resources in case observers find an object the probe is capable of visiting for a closer look.<br>If no interesting rock can be found, New Horizons will exit the Kuiper Belt sometime in 2028 or 2029, then sail out of the solar system.<br>Humanity has built just two working spacecraft – the Voyagers – that achieved that feat.<br>Both passed through the heliosheath, a distant region where the solar wind starts to run out of puff as interstellar gases push into the solar system. The heliosheath ends at the heliopause, a boundary at which the pressure of the solar wind and the interstellar medium are equal. Astroboffins think the heliopause is at about 130 AU. Voyager 2 is at about 140 AU and Voyager 1 has travelled 170 AU. ®
science<br>nasa<br>space<br>voyager<br>the sun
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Science
New Horizons Pluto probe just woke itself up after 321 days of hibernation
Good luck getting your PC to do that after lunch
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