The Pluto Perspective: No Sleep Until After the Flyby
17 Jul 2020, 15:00 UTC
NASA
By the Pluto flyby on July 14, 2015, most of the New Horizons engineering team was running on fumes. The spacecraft had been operating in 3-axis (observation) mode for most of the year, conducting optical navigation, long-distance science, and the occasional trajectory correction maneuver to stay on course. Given the cadence of communications with New Horizons through NASA's Deep Space Network, sometimes I would be on shift starting at 6 a.m., only to start another shift at 8 p.m. the same day.
