NASA's New Horizons probe, which made its flyby of Pulto on July 14 and gathered information on the planet and its moons, began its downlink phase on Saturday, according to Gizmag.
The downlink phase refers to the stage of the probe when packets of information, high-resolution images and other data begins to be sent back to Earth, a process that will take approximately one year to conclude.
Thus far, the New Horizons probe has only been sending lower data-rate information obtained from energetic particle, solar wind and space dust tools, according to Newsmax. Despite the lower data-rate, the pictures sent back up until now have been impressive, including a closeup of the planet's icy mountains.
"During the data downlink phase, the spacecraft transmits science and operations data to NASA's Deep Space Network of antenna stations, which also provide services to other missions, like Voyager," said NASA. "With New Horizons past Pluto, the typical downlink rate is approximately 1-4 kilobits per second, depending on how the data is sent and which DSN antenna is receiving it."
The information will take approximately 16 months for scientists to gather, something that should not be surprising according to Greg Rienzi of John Hopkins University.
"For one, consider that the information has to travel more than three billion miles," he said. "Even moving at the speed of light, that's a 4.5-hour trip for a single image."
From the beginning, the goal of New Horizons was to gather as much information as possible as the probe flew past Pluto and its moons, which would later be transmitted back to Earth, according to Space Coast Daily.
