Japanese spacecraft misses target, fails to orbit Venus

December 8, 2010 By Jeffrey Van Camp

Akatsuki, a Japanese research spacecraft, failed to enter orbit around Venus Monday after losing communication with Earth.

You know what they say, if you spend $300 million to shoot a research vessel to Venus and completely miss the planet, try try again. Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft has missed its opportunity to enter orbit around Venus and won’t be able to try again for six years, says the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

The 1,000 Lb. probe attempted to enter orbit Monday by firing its main engine, but after struggling, it failed to latch onto the planet. Akatsuki was supposed to fire its engines at 6:49 p.m. EST Monday for about 12 minutes in an attempt to slow the probe down enough to be pulled into orbit by Venus’s gravity, but shortly after the spacecraft’s thrusters ignited it passed behind Venus, blocking communication for nearly 90 minutes, far longer than the 22 minutes of outage scientists expected. When communication was regained, they discovered it had not entered orbit.

The spacecraft has been rocketing toward Venus since its launch from the Tenegashima Space Center on May 20. The orbiting craft’s two year mission was to collect data on the planet’s atmosphere and runaway greenhouse effect. It also has sensors that can detect active volcanoes and hunt for lightning storms. Venus’s atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide, clouds of sulfuric acid, and 225 mph winds. Because of the greenhouse effect of the CO2, the planet’s surface reaches temperatures of almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit. These are a few of the odd things about Venus Japanese scientists hoped to study.

“Although Venus is believed to have formed under similar conditions to Earth, it is a completely different world from our planet, with extremely high temperatures due to the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide and a super-rotating atmosphere blanketed by thick clouds of sulfuric acid,” said Takeshi Imamura, Akatsuki’s project scientist (Spaceflight Now).

Akatsuki is Japan’s second failure to enter a planet’s orbit. In 1999 and 2003, the country’s Nozomi robotic orbiter missed its opportunities to enter orbit around Mars. Akatsuki will have one final chance at entering orbit when it is in position again in about six years.

Showing 7 comments

Obie Wan at 3:57pm 14th December 2010 what other planets are under going global warming and green house effects?
Boo Dog at 9:04pm 12th December 2010 Cheer up you guys. we are exactly where we are supposed to be. enjoy the ride
pek at 1:25pm 12th December 2010 the biggest fact is we (some) continue to think (cerebral chemical actions) that humanity is the end all of the species. we've been her a scant few million years and ha, we think we know it all (some do) and how it all works. sorry my fellow creatures, we'll soon be gone the way of so many non-adaptive abominations, in a universe that far exceeds what little capacity we have to comprehend. so, go ahead feel fuzzy and warm for now, with the implanted knowledge from eons of prior mutations sustaining your delusions of your world and the further beyond. copulate and war just as the primals did to propogate their defective dna strings, feign alliance to some religeous tales of conquest and subduction. the far reach of the nearest planets may qualm your curiosity, but will not provide a kinder, more gentle gestational environment as well as the earth we now sunder and contaminate.
Cartman at 9:13am 12th December 2010 Shhh! Don't say that! We aren't supposed to use facts and logic when we talk about global warming! We're supposed to only use our feelings and emotions and see the picture of the lonely baby polar bear, starving because of the evils of America (while the polar bear populations goes UP every year). We have to react like children do, with feelings, and ignore any facts. Like the fact that several other planets in our solar system have temerature increases that have paralleled Earths. Damn it! We have to ignore that fact because it doesn't fit with our emotions, out hatred of big companies and of America, so we'll just ignore it. Seee, life is so much better when we just let ourselves think like children think.
1. Sho 'nuf at 9:45am 12th December 2010 You mean narrow-minded, shallow 'adults' that use select 'facts' that appear to support their backwards- looking political beliefs?
Matt McClure at 11:11pm 11th December 2010 Venus is 42 Million KM closer to the sun than Earth. Its not just "runaway greenhouse effect" that causes the extremes on that planet.
1. Bryan at 2:00pm 13th December 2010 True. But Venus has a higher surface temperature than that of Mercury while a little less than twice the distance sun.