New Horizons Pluto probe just woke itself up after 321 days of hibernation

NASA’s New Horizons probe has woken itself up after 321 days of hibernation. 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. On June 23, NASA checked to see if New Horizons had obeyed the instruction to wake up and was pleased to …

[KittenHuffer]

First Post from New Horizons .....

..... Yaaaaaaawn! Caffeine please!

Followed by ..... Are we there yet?

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: First Post from New Horizons .....

First one to see the sea gets an Opal Fruit*!

Dispensed by Mum in the passenger seat from the cornucopia glovebox.

*Starburst for da yoof wot don't know any better, like wat it woz in da good old dayz.

[the spectacularly refined chap]

Re: First Post from New Horizons .....

But are those the mushy ones that stick to the wax paper? From being left in a hot glovebox for too long?

[ravenviz]

Re: First Post from New Horizons .....

Just eat them* with paper on like we used to.

*and Pacers

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: First Post from New Horizons .....

ravenviz,

It took me years to master the art of getting the paper off the sweets in one piece. Hence impatience often had me eating half the wrapper...

I'd forgotten Pacers. Yum!

Softmints are almost as nice. But I can't be trusted with them. Too easy to scarf the whole packet in about 30 seconds.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: First Post from New Horizons .....

Too easy to scarf the whole packet in about 30 seconds.

And then wait for The Revenge of Sorbitol™

[MachDiamond]

Re: First Post from New Horizons .....

"But are those the mushy ones that stick to the wax paper? "

Best way to eat them. Too cold and they are too hard.

[MachDiamond]

Re: First Post from New Horizons .....

"First one to see the sea gets an Opal Fruit*!"

I can remember having games like that on long trips. There used to be books of lists of things we'd have to spot to earn points towards treats. The book also had drawings so we needed to learn what tree was what, etc. I think that as far better than anything to do with a screen. We got really good at spotting brands of big trucks and exotic sports cars. The mental exercise also wore us out enough that we took naps and gave the parental units some quiet time.

[cookieMonster]

Re: First Post from New Horizons .....

We used to get tasks such as count the “yellow cars” or how many “buses can we see” for 30 mins etc. or the first one to spot a cow etc etc. good times.

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone worked out when it might overtake the voyagers? (Yes, I know the data is available but I have real work to do can't be bothered)

Broadly it's covered more than half the distance in less than half the time so must be going faster.

[Anonymous Coward]

NH will never overtake V'ger, the Voyagers got bigger gravity assists throughout their mission and are going faster than NH despite NH having a faster initial speed. NH will overtake the Pioneers.

[geoff61]

Current distance is not the same as distance travelled

> Astroboffins think the heliopause is at about 130 AU. Voyager 2 is at about 140 AU and Voyager 1 has travelled 170 AU.

Saying Voyager 1 "has travelled" 170AU tells you nothing about its current distance, as its trajectory was not a straight line. In fact, its current distance is roughly 170AU (Wikipedia says 172.59 in March 2026) so this was an incorrect statement. I would estimate the distance travelled to be in excess of 190AU, because its path to Saturn was roughly a semi-circle with a diameter of 11AU making the distance travelled to get to Saturn about 17AU. (This assumes there is not much difference between its current distance from Earth and from where it left Saturn, but I think that's okay because its trajectory from Saturn was up out of the ecliptic.)

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Current distance is not the same as distance travelled

Hey! Please use the boffin icon when posting stuff like that. I nearly burnt my brain!

[Fonant]

Relativity in action?

Article:

"Published Thu 09 Jul 2026"

Also article:

"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.

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."

Someone predicting news 24 days in advance? Relativity? Hoax?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Relativity in action?

..ǝɯᴉʇ ɥʇᴉʍ sƃuᴉɥʇ pɹᴉǝʍ sǝop ǝɔɐdS

[Steve Foster]

Re: Relativity in action?

The hibernation and wake up dates are in the context of "last july".

So August 7 refers to 2025-08-07, not 2026-08-07.

[RegGuy1]

Re: Relativity in action?

Good man. At least you didn't write it in that ambiguous way: 07-08-2025, or 08-07-2025. I mean, WTF do these mean? Are they the same? Are they different?

So thumbs up for that.

[Evil Auditor]

Re: Relativity in action?

That should have never ever been a problem if no fuckwit came up with writing a date as mm-dd-yyyy, and, crucially, said fuckwit found countless followers who thought: yeah, that's a brilliant idea. Let's go with it!

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Relativity in action?

Got one of those in respect of a subscription cancellation yesterday… 08/11/2026

August? November? Take your pick.

[Big_Boomer]

NASA Unveils that is has achieved Time Travel

Or did their Press Release have a typo, or did ElReg insert the typo? <LOL>

[Gavin Jamie]

Still quite local

170 AU is still 0.25% of a light year or a little less than a light day.

Space is, like, really big.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Still quite local

"I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Still quite local

Ahhh this must be Thursday...I need my third pint.

[Big_C]

Re: Still quite local

You are of course right.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

Do not forget your towel. :)

[MachDiamond]

Re: Still quite local

"Do not forget your towel. :)"

There's no towel icon!

Mine's the blue one with the yellow stars. (I have two)

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: Still quite local

...but are they barbecue sauce flavour?

[MachDiamond]

Re: Still quite local

"170 AU is still 0.25% of a light year or a little less than a light day."

The Deep Space Network web page isn't showing round trip light time, but it's around 36 hours. They are showing the distance as 9.58bn KM. Impressive for a band of monk apes. Whew, close one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Get me NASA on the line

See if you can wake the President.

He’s definitely gone into some form of deep hibernation cycle.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Get me NASA on the line

Shame we can't launch him into the Oort Cloud.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Get me NASA on the line

Obtuse Orange Repulsive Twat Cloud

[anonymous boring coward]

It probably helped that Windows didn't wake it up 50 times to check if it needed updating, and then did several updates draining the batteries.

[Eclectic Man]

Running out of 'Puff'

... the heliosheath, a distant region where the solar wind starts to run out of puff as interstellar gases push into the solar system.

I know how it feels. I was* in training for next year's London Marathon, and in 30 plus degree heat I run out of puff very quickly (after about 100 metres).

* Rejected this time ( strangely I feel somewhat relieved ), but I'll keep up the training, probably.