Next from New Horizons: The Complete Data Set!
The break is over, the team took a little well-deserved vacation and also selected the spacecraft’s next destination, and now, as of today, New Horizons can resume transmitting the encounter data. So get ready, because 95% of what it recorded is yet to come and I’m quite sure they gave a higher priority to what the public is likely to be more interested in, so expect quite a few releases that will, or at least should, make quite an impact over the coming days and weeks.
Yes, patience will still be required, as the speed will be of a few kilobits per second at most and, while I assume New Horizons will have priority much of the time, DSN time is shared with all other active missions. In addition, those who want the lossless data will have to wait even longer, as that won’t even start being sent until the complete data set will be received in a more heavily compressed form, to ensure that less will be completely lost in case problems will appear later. But, as of today, information should keep coming and, depending on the rate at which they’ll process and release it to the public, something new should be available at the very least every week, and possibly even every day.
