On July 4, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft lost contact with mission control for an hour and 21 minutes. NASA said the reason for the loss of contact is not known for now and the spacecraft went into safe mode. But now, the mission control has said that it plans to get back to normal operations on July 7.

NASA said the incident will not affect the plan of the mission's July 14 flyby. Engineers are in touch with the probe again but the agency stated that it will take many days before the probe gets back to its normal routine.

The spacecraft is approaching Pluto and is currently, 11 kms from Pluto and move fast. It is not the first time when New Horizons has lost contact. In March 2007, a memory error took place that led the spacecraft go into safe mode.

When the probe goes into this mode, then it stops doing other tasks and waits for getting command from controllers. At that time, New Horizons was back in less than two days. But now, the situation is different, as the probe is farther from earth, which means delay in communications and trouble-shooting becomes a tough task.

Principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said they have been working to know what happened. On July 14, the probe will pass within 12,500 kilometres of Pluto and will mark the first ever visit to the dwarf planet.