"Something key they discovered very quickly was that just before the spacecraft’s signal stopped, the main computer had been doing two things at once, both of w

"Something key they discovered very quickly was that just before the spacecraft’s signal stopped, the main computer had been doing two things at once, both of which were computationally demanding. One of these tasks was compressing 63 Pluto images taken previously, in order to free up memory space for the close flyby imaging soon to begin. At the same time, the computer was also receiving the Core load from Earth and storing it in its memory." Concurrency is a powerful multiplier of risk.