Date: 9/04/2016 05:46:14
From: mollwollfumble
ID: 871606
Subject: Astro-h satellite broke up.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/03/jaxa_confirms_astroh_breakup/
Japan’s space agency JAXA has confirmed the loss of the ASTRO-H X-Ray satellite.
Originally believed to have been a successful launch, things turned sour for the satellite when the space agency was unable to raise communications with ASTRO-H at the end of March.
mollwollfumble said:
ASTRO-H X-Ray satellite is also known as NeXT, next generation X-ray telescope, and Hitomi. The probe carried four instruments and six detectors to observe photons with energies ranging from soft X-rays to gamma rays, with a high energy resolution.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/03/jaxa_confirms_astroh_breakup/Japan’s space agency JAXA has confirmed the loss of the ASTRO-H X-Ray satellite.
Originally believed to have been a successful launch, things turned sour for the satellite when the space agency was unable to raise communications with ASTRO-H at the end of March.
JSpOC released orbital data for ten detected pieces of debris, five more than originally reported, including one piece that was large enough to initially be confused with the main body of the spacecraft. Amateur trackers have observed what is believed to be Hitomi tumbling in orbit, with reports of the main spacecraft body (Object A) rotating once every 1.3 or 2.6 seconds, and the next largest piece (Object L) rotating every 10 seconds.
At least three other large X-ray telescopes are still operating in orbit. Chandra and XMM-Newton and NuSTAR. NuSTAR’s original 2 year mission was extended to 4 years, a further extension would be needed to go past 2016.
Talking about broken space telescopes, the Kepler space telescope has recovered from emergency and is stable.
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler-recovered-from-emergency-and-stable
> During a scheduled contact on Thursday, April 7, mission operations engineers discovered that the Kepler spacecraft was in Emergency Mode (EM). EM is the lowest operational mode and is fuel intensive. The mission was declared a spacecraft emergency. The previous last successful contact was on April 4.
Since then.
Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode.
The mission has cancelled the spacecraft emergency, returning the Deep Space Network ground communications to normal scheduling.
Once data is on the ground, the team will thoroughly assess all on board systems to ensure the spacecraft is healthy enough to return to science mode and begin the K2 mission’s microlensing observing campaign, called Campaign 9. This checkout is anticipated to continue through the week.
What was “Campaign 8?”