Published on October 7, 2017
On Sept. 11, 2017, New Horizons was 3.62 billion miles (5.82 billion kilometers) from Earth. At that distance, a radio signal sent from the spacecraft reached Earth 5 hours and 24 minutes later.
The 157-day hibernation period that ended Sept. 11 was the spacecraft’s first “rest” since before the Pluto flyby in July 2015, and one of two hibernation periods before the MU69 flyby.
New Horizons is 369 million miles (593 million kilometers) – about four times the distance between Earth and the Sun – from 2014 MU69, which it will fly by in 476 days.
