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NASA's New Horizons in Trouble: Could Create problems for Pluto Mission

| Jul 06, 2015 09:15 AM EDT

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NASA's New Horizons is showing some mysterious signs of technical problems just 10 days before it was supposed to make its approach to Pluto.

It was supposed to send back new information about the farthest planet of our Solar System.

New Horizons was launched in 2006 for the first time, according to CNET. During its initial journey in space, the space craft showed some technical snags due to which it went out of the radar and contact for about two hours.

During this duration, the auto pilot present in the New Horizons was successful in detecting the issue and putting the space craft in to its safe mode. This established back the radar and communication systems and NASA was able to communicate with it normally.

Looking at its current technical snag, the controller is not able to enter in to the safe mode of the device, as it is unable to get its hands on the data which instructs it to do so, according to Christian Science Monitor.

The space craft runs on an operating system similar to Windows, which should make it easier for NASA to send it into a recovery mode. According to NASA, it might take several days before New Horizons is up and running.

As NASA is going in blind to resolve the issue, the mission may get delayed than its scheduled completion time. The scientists also fear that at its present unknown speed, the space craft can cross Pluto entirely without any intimation going back to NASA. If this happens, NASA will be in big trouble as the trajectory after this course is not planned at all.

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