New Horizons Wakes at 9.5 Billion km as ISS Crew Returns After 241 Days

NASA's New Horizons probe has woken from hibernation 9.5 billion km from Earth, while three ISS crew members have returned after a 241-day mission.

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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has come out of hibernation today, August 2, 2026, at a distance of 9.5 billion kilometers from Earth. The probe, which has been in a dormant state for 321 days, sent a signal that takes about nine hours to reach mission control. During its long sleep, New Horizons continued to gather data through its heliospheric plasma sensors and space dust detector, and it transmitted weekly status updates, all of which were positive, according to NASA.

Now that it is awake, ground teams will check the spacecraft's health and begin analyzing the data collected during hibernation. In about three weeks, around August 23, the onboard ultraviolet spectrograph is scheduled to study the distribution of hydrogen in the outer heliosphere. Looking further ahead, New Horizons is expected to cross the termination shock of the solar system in 2027.

The spacecraft launched in January 2006 with a primary mission to explore Pluto, the only planet that had not been observed close-up at that time. Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in summer 2006, but New Horizons still reached and analyzed it in 2015. Its secondary mission began in 2016, leading to a flyby of the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth, the most distant object ever studied up close.

In a separate event today, three astronauts returned from the International Space Station (ISS). Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikayev, along with NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, landed in the Soyuz MS-28 capsule at 12:27 German time in the Kazakh steppe near Zhezkazgan. Mikayev said in a short statement that he feels well. For Williams and Mikayev, this was their first ISS stay, while Kud-Sverchkov completed his second.

The crew launched at the end of November 2025 and spent eight months, or 241 days, in space. During their mission, they orbited Earth 3,856 times and traveled more than 160 million kilometers, according to NASA. Their return marks the end of the 74th long-term ISS expedition, which began in early December and included the first medical evacuation of an ISS crew member in the station's history. The expedition involved a total of ten crew members, who conducted 259 scientific experiments in pharmaceutical, physical, and other fields, as listed in NASA's database.

Mikayev and Kud-Sverchkov performed one spacewalk together, while Williams participated in two of the three total spacewalks. With the departure of the three crew members, the ISS now has a crew of seven. Kud-Sverchkov handed over command to NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, who will lead the station until the end of summer 2026. The 75th ISS expedition begins today and will run until spring 2027.

The ISS orbits at an altitude of about 400 kilometers, and its continuous human presence has now lasted for about 25 years.

Looking ahead, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch on August 30, 2026, at 07:26 am EDT aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The telescope is named after NASA's first chief astronomer. Other upcoming missions include the IMAP spacecraft, launched September 24, 2025, which will study the boundary of the heliosphere; Pandora, a small satellite designed to characterize exoplanet atmospheres, which will observe at least 20 planets during one year of science operations; and Dragonfly, a rotorcraft that will explore Saturn's moon Titan to investigate its habitability.