Though it's 2 billion miles away and on the wrong side of the sun, NASA’s New Horizons probe cast quite a shadow on 4th of July festivities. Just days from its rendezvous with Pluto, the spacecraft shut down, went into sleep mode, and briefly lost communication with ground control.
Exhale, it’s all good. About an hour after the tiny probe went dark, NASA reestablished communications. And the agency knows what went wrong. New Horizon’s central computer was gearing up for new observations while simultaneously compressing science it had already captured. All the activity overclocked its processor, so it went into sleep mode.
In other words, New Horizons got so excited it passed out. Don’t feel bad, little guy, we’ve all had a 4th of July like that. Read more here.
