On Jan. 19, 2006, New Horizons launched for its voyage to Pluto. To save money and instrument wear and tear, New Horizons has spent about two-thirds of the flight in hibernation, according to Space Coast Daily. On Dec. 6, 2014 at 3 p.m. EST, New Horizons started a wake up sequence. Ninety minutes later, New Horizons sent a message to Earth that it is awake and ready for contact with Pluto in 2015.
"This is a watershed event that signals the end of New Horizons crossing of a vast ocean of space to the very frontier of our solar system, and the beginning of the mission's primary objective: the exploration of Pluto and its many moons in 2015," Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo., told Space Coast Daily.
"Technically, this was routine, since the wake-up was a procedure that we'd done many times before," Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager, told Space Coast Daily. "Symbolically, however, this is a big deal. It means the start of our pre-encounter operations."
