back to article NASA's New Horizons probe scores extended vacation in Kuiper Belt

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which performed a flyby of Pluto in 2015, is being granted a mission extension through 2029. Starting in fiscal 2025, the probe will focus on gathering heliophysics data while preserving the opportunity for another Kuiper Belt Object flyby if a suitable candidate is detected. Nicola Fox, …

  1. TVU Silver badge

    NASA's New Horizons probe scores extended vacation in Kuiper Belt

    This is excellent news and I hope that New Horizons can pass by one or more new and never seen before Kuiper Belt objects.

  2. Catkin Silver badge

    More bandwidth than money

    I expect a likely impact for continued operations on other missions is more that the Deep Space Network has a limited capacity. Remember that, even from Pluto, it took New Horizons a full year to transmit all the data from that encounter. While DSN is occupied with that (it will have to spend even more time for the lower bitrates), performance for other probes will be degraded, though upgrades are ongoing:

    https://www.nasa.gov/technology/nasas-deep-space-network-looks-to-the-future/

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