
Hibernation Over, New Horizons Continues Its Kuiper Belt Cruise - sohkamyung
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20170912
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eponeponepon
I'm really looking forward to seeing more from New Horizons. The Pluto photos
were amazing.

I just wish my PC would wake from sleep as reliably. I'm lucky if I can get it
back up after one night, never mind five months.

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rwmj
The target MU69 (fly-by on 1st Jan 2019) looks interesting. It's amazing that
we can tell it might have a double-lobed shape from such a distance:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(486958)_2014_MU69#Stellar_occ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/\(486958\)_2014_MU69#Stellar_occultations)

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sohkamyung
This post by Phil Plait [1] has some details on how they determined that: _The
way the star blinked out from different locations makes sense if MU69 is not a
single round object, but instead two roughly round objects, either orbiting
one another as a close binary system or touching each other in what’s called a
contact binary._

[1] [http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/is-new-
horizons%E2%80%99-next-t...](http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/is-new-
horizons%E2%80%99-next-target-a-binary-relic-of-the-ancient-solar-system)

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KGIII
Anyone know why it was sleeping? I can't find that information. Power
management while there was nothing interesting to do, maybe?

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eponeponepon
I rather look forward to a time when that's less necessary - the odds are
slim, but non-zero, that the probe may have passed by something interesting
while powered down, but we can never know.

I really have no idea what advances might enable that, though.

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KGIII
Stronger RTGs, maybe?

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Wingman4l7
More resilient electronics.

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TeMPOraL
One thing that would enable that is cheaper cost to orbit, which would let us
build heavier probes with more rugged hardware.

