Slashdot Mirror
Japan Releases AKATSUKI's Pictures of Venus (discovery.com)
astroengine writes: The Japanese space agency JAXA has released a confirmation that their Venus mission Akatsuki did indeed enter orbit at Venus on Dec. 7 (JST) — releasing unprocessed images of the Venusian atmosphere as it entered orbit. The spacecraft is currently in a highly-elliptical 13-day, 14-hour orbit around the planet, coming within 400 kilometers (248 miles) at its closest point and reaching 440,000 kilometers (243,400 miles) away at its farthest. This mission has just become the most unlikely success story of 2015 after "missing" its intended Venus orbit way back in 2010.
Spelling matters.
Looks a lot like what I had to go through to save my Jool mission. Congrats guys.
What the heck is a 'sig'?
Akatsuki releases images of Venus...did Venus give her permission?
I never knew that Venus had a big seam running perfectly in the middle of it.
...that man is a feeling creature.
And because of it, the greatest in the universe. He learned too late for himself that men have to find their own way, to make their own mistakes. There can't be any gift of perfection from outside ourselves. And when men seek such perfection... they find only death... fire... loss... disillusionment ... the end of everything that's gone forward. Men have always sought an end to toil and misery, but it can't be given, it has to be achieved. There is hope, but it has to come from inside, from Man himself.
... all of this trouble happened, the Planetary Society blog had a nice detailed writeup a while back. The "short" of it? Akatsuki has a new type of primary thruster based on ceramics to withstand the heat rather than exotic materials like dicilicide-lined niobium as are normally used on these sorts of small hypergolic thrusters; they wanted to prove the new technology. You generally run thrusters a bit fuel-rich and inject it in such a manner as to try limit combustion near the chamber and nozzle walls to keep the temperature down. Well, the pressurant valve to the fuel tank didn't open all the way (they think it corroded) but the oxidizer pressure valve opened all the way. So the burn kept getting more and more oxidizer rich, meaning hotter chamber and nozzle walls way past the design limits, until they cracked and the nozzle simply flew off.
The only reason they were able to salvage this was because another unusual choice they did: to save mass, they implemented a more complicated hydrazine (fuel) feed system, allowing them to use the same hydrazine suppy for the main engine as for the small monopropellant RCS thrusters (tiny, low-efficiency maneuvering thrusters). Because they did this, they were able to take the fuel that was planned for the main engine and route it instead to the RCS engines. While they're less efficient and much lower thrust, they had enough excess fuel to pull off the maneuver (after first making the craft lighter by dumping the now-unneeded oxidizer, of course!)
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
Did someone tell them there are whales on Venus?
Why do the Japanese always choose December 7th to travel long distances and invade places?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The monster from "It Conquered the World" was from Venus.
The grand old lady was known in Homer's Illiad as 'white armed Hera', the wife of Zeus.
Othewise Itachi will be pretty pissed.
after the utterly spectacular imaging of Pluto by New Horizons. AKATSUKI is amateur hour in comparison.
Now that we know Akatsuki is hiding near Venus, Naruto will deal with them ... Believe It!
...release ITS pictures of Venus?
How about never? But you think allowing millions of Africans to flood into white countries every year is going to make our lives better?
WHY?