Japan's $273 Million Satellite Has Broken Up Into 'Multiple Pieces' (techinsider.io)

An anonymous reader writes: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced that it has lost contact with its "Hitomi" satellite -- a state-of-the-art X-ray observatory, developed in conjunction with NASA, to spy on energetic processes in space including black holes, massive galaxies, and exploding stars. On Sunday, March 27, the Japanese Space Agency announced it had lost contact with the satellite on March 26, just a little more than a month after it was launched on February 17. Now, Members of the U.S. Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC), a military organization that identifies and tracks space debris near Earth, said five objects were drifting near the location of Hitomi at around the same time it lost communication with Earth, Nature reports. It's being reported that Hitomi has separated into "multiple pieces" before March 26. Currently, there are about 40 JAXA technicians scouring the skies, trying to locate the expensive observatory.

Comments

Back at JAXA's assembly facility

[idontgno]

workmen cleaning up in the HITOMI clean bay are overheard saying "look at all these extra screws and bolts!"

Five Objects?

[tsotha]

Those five objects are going to reform into a giant robot.