NASA's New Horizons Pluto Data Will Take 16 Months To Reach Earth

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is said to be accumulating huge amount of data which would take 16 months to be transmitted to Earth.

The operations team at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory celebrated when New Horizons phoned-in Tuesday evening to confirm all was well. The call came nearly after a day the spacecraft suspended communications with Earth to do some science. NASA said it was part of the repertoire as New Horizons was flying by Pluto and had to focus on data gathering.

"The preprogrammed "phone call" -- a 15-minute series of status messages beamed back to mission operations at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland through NASA's Deep Space Network -- ended a very suspenseful 21-hour waiting period. New Horizons had been instructed to spend the day gathering the maximum amount of data, and not communicating with Earth until it was beyond the Pluto system," NASA said in a press release.

At 8.53 p.m. the spacecraft phoned in. The wait was tensed for the operations staff as there was a chance that small objects in the Kupier Belt, a region that is also home to Pluto, could strike the spacecraft and damage it.

"While this historic event is still unfolding --with the most exciting Pluto science still ahead of us -- a new era of solar system exploration is just beginning," said said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.