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Japanese Space Probe Akatsuki Enters Orbit Around Venus Five Years Late (space.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the better-late-than-never dept.

MarkWhittington writes: On May 17, 2010, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency Venus Climate Orbiter probe or as it is now called Akatsuki lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center. It was supposed to enter orbit around Venus on December 6, 2010. However, due to a failure in the probe's orbital maneuvering thruster, Akatsuki did not enter Venus orbit and went into orbit around the sun instead. According to a story on Space.com, just about five years to the day of the failure, Akatsuki assumed an orbit around the second planet from the sun. Japanese scientists will determine what sort of orbit that is in a couple of days and, hopefully, begin the probe's science mission.

3 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. More than just another attempt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The impressive thing here is that the thruster is still non-operational, so it wasn't just a matter of waiting 5 years to try again. Instead they're using the RCS system, a low-efficiency thruster which was only meant for steering, to perform orbital injection. Reportedly, this is the first time that's been done for a planetary transfer, and should hopefully let them salvage the science mission which was initially thought to be lost (remains to be seen if the science equipment is still working).

  2. pop culture space trivia by Al+Al+Cool+J · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Akatsuki carries 68 fan-made images of Japanese crowdsourced digital pop star Hatsune Miku, etched onto three aluminium plates. I suppose this makes Miku the solar system's first interplanetary celebrity. (Also last year, a Miku music video was beamed into deep space by the European Space Agency as part of its "Wake up, Rosetta!" campaign).

    I believe the only other pop music purposefully represented in deep space, is the Chuck Berry song Johnny B. Goode, which is on NASA's Golden Records carried by the two Voyager probes.

  3. Luck or wisdom? by hackertourist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They can do this attempt because when the original orbit insertion failed, Akatsuki entered a heliocentric orbit in an 8:9 orbital resonance with Venus, making sure it'd meet up with Venus eventually. I haven't been able to find if that was a happy coincidence or if the initial approach to Venus was designed for this contingency.