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Alan Stern, the mission's P.I., dispelled rumors that contact had been lost on the USF forum, saying "Such rumors are untrue. The bird is communicating nominall

Alan Stern, the mission's P.I., dispelled rumors that contact had been lost on the USF forum, saying "Such rumors are untrue. The bird is communicating nominally."[0] Also the Deep Space Network[1] page shows an ongoing 1kbps downlink from New Horizons; during the safe mode event it was at only 9bps. So that's a good sign! I'm sure they are still panicking a bit about what went wrong, but hopefully we're out of the woods on this particular anomaly. [0] http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=8047&st=180 http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=8047&... [1] http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

magicalist 11y ago
> Alan Stern, the mission's P.I., dispelled rumors that contact had been lost on the USF forum Not sure what you mean? He was responding to the (supposed) rumor that contact had "been lost again or was never regained". That Deep Space Network Now page is great. Thanks for sharing.
- dandelany 11y ago
  We're saying the same thing. He dispelled rumors that contact had been lost [permanently]. Sorry if that was unclear - the article clearly states it was certainly lost the first time.
tptacek 11y ago
The idea that we have an ongoing digital comms with something this far from Earth is completely fascinating to me. Are the encodings used documented anywhere? All I can find out is that it's X-band, 1kb/s.
- bigiain 11y ago
  Sadly, I'm guessing a scavenged satellite tv dish and a $12 SDR with a home built antenna is not going to let me listen in... I wonder just how badly TCP would cope with 32million millisecond round trip ping times?
  - CamperBob2 11y ago
    You could eavesdrop on some of the probes with a setup like that, just not anything as far out as New Horizons. Google "amateur DSN" for more.
- throwaway_yy2Di 11y ago
  "...encodes block frame data from the spacecraft Command and Data Handling (C&DH) system into rate 1/6, CCSDS Turbo-coded blocks." [pdf] http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~tcase/NH%20RF%20Telecom%20Sys%20ID1369%20FINAL_Deboy.pdf http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~tcase/NH%20RF%20Telecom%20Sys%2...
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Cooooool. ["CCSDS" "standard"] was the Google search I was looking for.
    - planteen 11y ago
      If you are curious about reading more, CCSDS is an overloaded term in the space industry for an onion of different OSI layers that are changing all the time. My guess is that the telemetry coding standard CCSDS 101.0-B-6 is likely to have been used on New Horizons. Even though it is now a "historical document", some new space missions still use it. Here is a copy: http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/101x0b6s.pdf http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/101x0b6s.pdf

magicalist 11y ago

> Alan Stern, the mission's P.I., dispelled rumors that contact had been lost on the USF forum Not sure what you mean? He was responding to the (supposed) rumor that contact had "been lost again or was never regained". That Deep Space Network Now page is great. Thanks for sharing.

dandelany 11y ago
We're saying the same thing. He dispelled rumors that contact had been lost [permanently]. Sorry if that was unclear - the article clearly states it was certainly lost the first time.

tptacek 11y ago

The idea that we have an ongoing digital comms with something this far from Earth is completely fascinating to me. Are the encodings used documented anywhere? All I can find out is that it's X-band, 1kb/s.

bigiain 11y ago
Sadly, I'm guessing a scavenged satellite tv dish and a $12 SDR with a home built antenna is not going to let me listen in... I wonder just how badly TCP would cope with 32million millisecond round trip ping times?
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  You could eavesdrop on some of the probes with a setup like that, just not anything as far out as New Horizons. Google "amateur DSN" for more.
throwaway_yy2Di 11y ago
"...encodes block frame data from the spacecraft Command and Data Handling (C&DH) system into rate 1/6, CCSDS Turbo-coded blocks." [pdf] http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~tcase/NH%20RF%20Telecom%20Sys%20ID1369%20FINAL_Deboy.pdf http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~tcase/NH%20RF%20Telecom%20Sys%2...
- tptacek 11y ago
  Cooooool. ["CCSDS" "standard"] was the Google search I was looking for.
  - planteen 11y ago
    If you are curious about reading more, CCSDS is an overloaded term in the space industry for an onion of different OSI layers that are changing all the time. My guess is that the telemetry coding standard CCSDS 101.0-B-6 is likely to have been used on New Horizons. Even though it is now a "historical document", some new space missions still use it. Here is a copy: http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/101x0b6s.pdf http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/101x0b6s.pdf