NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has emerged in good health after nearly a year in its longest hibernation period to date. Controllers at NASA’s mission operations team at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, confirm the spacecraft’s status as it wakes up from the sleep mode used to conserve power and other onboard resources during long-duration flight.
After waking, the spacecraft begins preparing to transmit science data back to Earth. The data were collected during its mission in the distant Kuiper Belt, a region of space well beyond Pluto. New Horizons is still operating in the outer solar system, where mission planners use periodic hibernation cycles to manage limited energy availability while continuing scientific observations.
Reporting across outlets describes the wake-up as occurring roughly six billion miles from Earth, emphasizing the long communication and operational time scales involved. The spacecraft’s next phase focuses on returning the stored measurements and continuing its exploration of objects and conditions in the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto.
