07/07/2015 – Ephemeris – New Horizons will resume science gathering after glitch July 4th.

Ephemeris for Tuesday, July 7th.  Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 25 minutes, setting at 9:30.   The Moon, 1 day before last quarter, will rise at 12:56 tomorrow morning.  Tomorrow the Sun will rise at 6:05.

On July 4th, the New Horizons spacecraft, now one week from is flyby of Pluto, suffered a glitch and went into safe mode.  It, however switched to its backup computer, and is now in contact with the Earth.  Sunday night it was determined that the problem was a timing flaw in a command sequence preparing for Pluto encounter.  Normal spacecraft operations will resume today.  Two way communication time is now nearly 9 hours, almost half a day.  Earth day that is.  New Horizons is approaching Pluto at 31,000 miles an hour.  The spacecraft will have only a few hours to observe Pluto and its moons at their closest next Tuesday.   It’s getting down to crunch time for the little spacecraft.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

I wrote Tuesday’s program Sunday night before the announcement that the problem with New Horizons was found and the spacecraft would back to normal on Tuesday.  I found that out just before recording the programs, and had to do a quick fix.   With New Horizons problems found, I could write the July 13th program I had planned.  I write and record 5 programs at a time – Tuesday through Monday.

Artist’s rendition credit NASA.