Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Japanese Akatsuki mission to Venus fails

    Space is unfriendly and failures are inevitable in space missions. Infact they are not called ``failures,'' but a ``learning process.''  Count the number of US and former Soviet Union space missions which have ``failed.''  But eventually after studying the cause of the failure, the errors are rectified and subsequent missions become a success.

    Yes, since Tuesday we have all been anxiously waiting for the successful Venus Orbit Insertion of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Akatsuki mission to Venus. At one point the ground controllers lost radio contact, but regained it after a while giving them hope that the orbit insertion will take place successfully.

     They waited and waited, but nothing happened. All efforts to contact the spacecraft failed. And finally after the spectacular success of JAXA's sample return mission Hayabusa from an asteroid, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS)  of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) (ISAS/JAXA) declared on Wednesday night: `` Venus orbit insertion maneuver (VOI-1) for the Venus Climate Orbiter "AKATSUKI" was performed at 8:49 a.m. on December 7 (Japan Standard Time,), But, unfortunately, we have found that the orbiter was not injected into the planned orbit as a result of orbit estimation.''

     It said: The "AKATSUKI" was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center on May 21,
2010 (JST.)

    JAXA has set up an investigation team led by ISAS Director within JAXA to study
the cause of the failure.

     We are sure that the next attempt will succeed.

No comments:

Post a Comment