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Now that's some latency!

I dare say that scientists at NASA were chewing their nails for quite some time last weekend when the New Horizons probe spat the dummy on its approach to Pluto.

This probe was launched almost a decade ago and has spent much of that time in stasis as it bounced around the solar-system on a path to the furthest planet from the sun.

Although it awoke from its sleep right on queue and appeared to be functioning perfectly, over the weekend it encountered a problem and shut down for a short period - before returning to life in "safe mode".

If I were on the New Horizons project team I'd be mighty pee'd off if, after nine years and 3.5 billion miles, something threw a spanner in the works at this late stage.

Fortunately, NASA tell us that they've been able to restore normal operations aboard the craft so we can expect to see some pretty impressive images being beamed back in around a week's time.

Now despite the hitches, this is a pretty impressive achievement.

New Horizons is now an incredible 4.5 light-hours from Earth and the craft has survived almost a decade in standby mode, while exposed to the harshness of interplanetary space.

Just as incredible is the navigational competence involved. Remember that there is no GPS in space and a mistake of even a tiny fraction of an arc of a degree would see the probe miss its target by millions of miles -- yet it's still right on course for a close encounter with Pluto.

It's also worth remembering that we're talking about decade-old technology -- not the latest "state of the art" stuff -- and yet it will soon be delivering what we all hope will be some eye-opening images of a planet which we've never seen in close detail before.

Already however, New Horizons has turned up some very interesting pictures which show that the surface of Pluto is far from rocky and barren. There are interesting features which have never been seen before -- such as the three large circular "spots" which so far defy explanation.

I find it rather ironic that the more we explore the farthest regions of the solar system, the more interesting stuff we find.

Jupiter's moons (especially Europa) have now become a potential home for extra-terrestrial life which is yet to be discovered. Titan has an incredible landscape littered with lakes of liquid methane and clouds of same. Ceres has some very interesting bright patches that so far defy explanation -- and now Pluto also becomes more mysterious the more we see of it.

Historically, it was Venus and Mars which scientists originally though may have been our best hope for finding life outside of Earth but perhaps we need to re-think things.

We once thought that for life to exist, temperatures had to approximate those here on Earth... but perhaps we were wrong. Could it be that life is more likely to be found in far colder environments after all. Might there be methane-based life on Titan or Pluto -- albeit little more than single-celled organisms?

The universe and indeed, our own local neighbourhood in the solar system is an incredibly interesting place and I'm so glad to be around during an era when so many of its secrets are being revealed.

And I still can't get over the 9-hours round-trip latency involved with communications to/from the New Horizons probe. That's just so cool and a constant reminder of just how far we are reaching out beyond the planet.

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