New Horizons Spacecraft Exits Hibernation 5.9 Billion Miles from Earth

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft exited hibernation on June 23, 2026, after entering the mode on August 7, 2025. Cnn reported that flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, verified the probe is in good health and prepared to transmit science data gathered during the sleep period.

The spacecraft sits 5.9 billion miles from Earth inside the Kuiper Belt.

It continues to record dust levels with the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter beyond the previously known boundary of the region, according to project scientist Pontus Brandt. New Horizons also measures gas distribution in the outer heliosphere and galactic cosmic rays with the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation instrument.

Brandt noted the heliosphere boundary shields the solar system from 70 percent of those rays.

The probe launched in January 2006 and has hibernated more than twenty times since 2007. It performed the first close flyby of Pluto and its moons in 2015 and examined the snowman-shaped object Arrokoth in 2019. Brandt stated there appear to be more paired, snowman-shaped bodies like Arrokoth than previously expected.

He added that the Kuiper Belt could be much more extended than thought and that New Horizons has likely only scratched the surface of the solar system’s structure. The spacecraft’s current extended mission is scheduled to conclude in 2029. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch at the end of August 2026 and may provide additional observations of objects beyond the Kuiper Belt.