http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/its-alive-nasas-new-horizons-pluto-probe-wakes-work-n262996

 . The first signals were received at the mission's control center at Johns Hopkins University's 

Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland via a giant radio antenna in Australia just before 9:30 p.m. ET, nearly four and a half hours after it was sent by the piano-sized probe. It takes that long for signals to travel between there and here at the speed of light. Later readings confirmed that New Horizons was fully awake.

 . The probe also has been sending weekly blips known as "green beacons" — to let the mission team know it's not dead, but only sleeping. The instructions for the wakeup call were transmitted to the spacecraft during a checkup in August, and the signal sent on Saturday confirmed that the instructions were executed earlier in the day.

To celebrate the occasion, the New Horizons team arranged for English tenor Russell Watson to record a special rendition of "Faith of the Heart" as a wakeup song. From now on, New Horizons will remain awake continuously through its Bastille Day flyby of Pluto and its moons next July 14.


 After a few weeks of preparation, the probe's instruments will start making long-range observations on Jan. 15. The spacecraft is currently about 162 million miles away from Pluto, but as that distance shrinks, the observations will get better and better. By next May,



New Horizons' images of Pluto should be sharper than the best pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. And in July, the probe may catch sight of the clouds and ice volcanoes that scientists suspect may exist on the dwarf planet.

 New Horizons will capture pictures of Pluto and its five known moons, but there may be surprises as well — still more moons, perhaps, or icy rings around Pluto.


 ' team is planning to send the probe past another icy object in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of cosmic material that lies beyond Neptune's orbit, in late 2018 or 2019. The probe's computer will also be reprogrammed to carry digital "selfies to the stars," courtesy of the One Earth New Horizons Message project. First published December 6th 2014, 10:37 pmhttp://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/its-alive-nasas-new-horizons-pluto-probe-wakes-work-n262996