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

Why only one

[Moof123]

Honest question here. We only make and launch one Hubble, one Jim Webb, etc. Design of these things is a large portion of the budget. The mirrors are the main item where the manufacturing cost greatly outstrips the design and tooling costs (I think?). So why don't we make a half dozen of each of these of these things instead of just one?

Re:Why only one

[thrich81]

I asked just that question of some people who build scientific spacecraft. They told me that building the second copy doesn't cost much less than the first one -- the second costs about 70% of the cost of the first was their guess. Economies of scale don't kick in for just a couple or few units. And you have to consider that these things seem to usually run over budget so any extra funds for a second spacecraft will be eaten up by overruns on the first unit. As far as building more than a few copies, by the time a science spacecraft actually gets built and launched the design is pretty old and the investigators would want to move on to the next generation rather than repeat capabilities. There have been times when twin spacecraft were built (Mariners 1&2, Mariners 3 Mariners 6&7, Mariners 8&9, Voyager 1&2, Viking 1&2) but those were a long time ago when launch vehicles were less reliable (Mariners 1, 3, and 8 were all lost to launch vehicle failures) and in those cases the second vehicle complemented the first rather than just providing redundancy.

Re:We asked for it

[sl3xd]

Insane velocities. First off: Equatorial orbits are rare. This means nearly every orbit has a significant north/south vector. And we have polar orbits as well. In short: you have to try really hard to have anything resembling the same direction. Wolfram Alpha pegs the average orbital velocity at 29.8 km/s. Thes velocities can easily be nearly 'head-on' at 60 km/s of impact velocity. Even a fraction of a gram impacting at those speeds is a very bad day.

The ISS has over 100 shielding systems for kinetic impact (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield). EVA suits are designed to be 'bullet' proof, and to maintain pressure after being hit by a meteor (for a while, at least).

The space shuttle generally flew 'backwards and upside down' to attempt to protect the crew from impacts. (http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae524.cfm)

A big reason for the large inspection time between shuttle flights was to find & replace tiles damaged by micrometeors.

Seriously: space ain't a walk in the park.