New Horizons Finished Returning Pluto Flyby Data
According to yesterday’s announcement, on October 25 New Horizons finished returning all data gathered from the Pluto flyby. There will be one final verification, to make sure that everything really was received and without errors, but I’m not seeing anything to indicate any reason for concern. So, while it sure was a long wait and it must have been dreadful for the scientists to have to watch all that precious data ever so slowly trickle in, probably also worrying that something may go wrong at some point before this operation will be completed and something will be lost, it can now pretty much be said that the initial mission completed successfully. And it did so in the early part of the estimated window, as the timeline lists the end of data playback as being between October and December 2016.
According to that same announcement, once the verification will be completed and it’ll be confirmed that everything was received without errors, the recorders will be erased and the spacecraft should be ready to start gathering new data, first by observing distant Kuiper Belt objects. Then, assuming everything will keep going well until then, it should reach 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019. Shouldn’t have nearly as much to do or see there and the body won’t exactly be interesting in itself, or at least not to those of us who aren’t experts in the field, but reaching a second object at all will be quite an achievement and very efficient use of the available resources.
Do find myself wondering what data rate it’ll achieve after it passes the second target and when should it finish returning the information gathered then as well, so if anyone somehow happens to read this and finds that information anywhere, could you please point me to it too? Thanks.
