Spacecraft Bound for Pluto Set to Awake Nine Years After Launch

New Horizons has been in hibernation, but will – hopefully – on December 6. The Pluto flyby phase will begin in January, with the closest approach on July 14, 2015.

While this story is cool and epic, they’ve always got to dump cold water on it by point out reality:

No voyage like this has been conducted since the epic days of Voyager, and nothing like it is planned again.

Gah.

In a better world, half the money spent on Medicare would instead be devoted to mass producing and launching probes of this kind. Sigh.