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JAXA Press Release: "Venus Climate Orbiter “AKATSUKI” Inserted Into Venus' Orbit"

This image of Venus was captured by the Akatsuki spacecraft’s Ultraviolet Imager (UVI), at around 12:19 a.m. EST (2:19 p.m. JST) on Dec. 7 at the Venus altitude of approximately 44,700 miles (72,000 kilometers).

NASA Press Release: "NASA Scientists Applaud Japanese Spacecraft Akatsuki’s Successful Rendezvous with Venus"

The nail-biting maneuver that sent Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft into orbit around Venus this week is being celebrated by NASA scientists, eager to learn more about the atmosphere and climate of Earth’s enigmatic sister planet.

At about 7 p.m. EST on Sunday, Dec. 6, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) commanded the climate orbiter to fire four thrusters, aimed at nudging the spacecraft into orbit around Venus. About a half hour later, JAXA/ISAS announced that the small probe had successfully achieved an elliptical orbit around Venus.

A statement issued Wednesday from JAXA confirms the successful insertion, the “good health” of the spacecraft, and its present orbit. “As a result of measuring and calculating the Akatsuki’s orbit after its thrust ejection, the orbiter is now flying on the elliptical orbit at the apoapsis altitude of about 400 kilometers and periapsis altitude of about 440,000 kilometers from Venus. The orbit period is 13 days and 14 hours. We also found that the orbiter is flying in the same direction as that of Venus’s rotation."

While space exploration doesn’t usually allow for second chances, Akatsuki got another shot at Venus after zipping past the planet on its first attempt in December of 2010, the result of a main engine failure during a crucial orbital-insertion burn. Akatsuki, which means ‘dawn’ or ‘daybreak’ in Japanese, spent five years orbiting the sun so it could catch up with Venus and try again.

Akatsuki is the first spacecraft to explore Venus since the European Space Agency’s Venus Express reached the end of its mission in 2014.

NASA’s Discovery program recently selected two Venus missions for further study, DaVinci and Veritas, which would complement Akatsuki’s scientific investigations.

The original mission plan was for an elliptical equatorial orbit with a 300 km apoapsis altitude and 80,000 km periapsis altitude. Now it's 400 km by 440,000 km. "Akatsuki should be able to accomplish most of its original science goals, although data will take longer to accumulate."

Spacefight Now:

Controllers activated three of Akatsuki’s five cameras before the spacecraft arrived at Venus, and JAXA published the first views from the imagers Wednesday. The probe’s other two cameras are scheduled to be switched on in the coming weeks.

The camera suite on Akatsuki, which is also named the Venus Climate Orbiter, includes two imagers to see Venus in two infrared wavelengths, a longwave infrared camera, an ultraviolet sensor, and an instrument to resolve potential lightning strikes in the Venusian atmosphere.

Each camera is designed to study a different part of the super-thick, sweltering atmosphere surrounding Venus and blocking camera views of its surface.

“From far distances, we continually monitor the global-scale dynamics of the atmosphere and clouds, and of course, from close distances, we take close-up images of the atmosphere, the surface, and we also observe lightning and airglow when the spacecraft is in the shadow of Venus,” said Takeshi Imamura, Akatsuki’s project scientist at JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science.

The mission will observe climate and weather conditions on Venus, looking at cloud patterns just above the surface and the super-rotating cloud structures that dominate the upper atmosphere. The ultraviolet camera will also track sulfur dioxide, a precursor to cloud formation at Venus.

Scientists hope to see the surface of Venus with one of Akatsuki’s infrared cameras in a bid to find active volcanoes. The cocoon of clouds around Venus prevents visible cameras from ever seeing through to the ground.

The data stream from Akatsuki could also hold clues on how clouds form on Venus, with measurements of sulfur dioxide — a precursor to cloud formation — water vapor and carbon monoxide.

Researchers also plan to measure radio waves transmitted through the planet’s atmosphere to measure its profile.

Akatsuki’s orbit is much farther from Venus than if the probe had entered orbit on time in 2010. The spacecraft’s attitude control thrusters had enough power to steer Akatsuki into orbit, but only its main engine could take it closer to Venus.

Imamura said engineers have uploaded new software to Akatsuki to better see Venus from the spacecraft’s higher-than-planned orbit, reducing the data volume coming back to Earth to streamline the mission’s scientific return.

“By combining this information, we can model the three-dimensional structure of the atmosphere and the clouds,” Imamura said.

Akatsuki’s ultraviolet camera, one-micron infrared imager and longwave infrared instrument are ready for observations, JAXA said Wednesday. The two-micron infrared camera, lightning detector and a radio oscillator for Akatsuki’s atmospheric profile measurements will be checked and put into operation now that the spacecraft is in orbit.

The mission’s ground team will guide Akatsuki closer to Venus over the next few months, eventually putting the probe in a nine-day orbit around the planet.

Regular observations are due to begin in April 2016, officials said.

The other 2 images:

"By 1μm camera (IR1) at around 1:50 p.m. on Dec. 7 (Japan Standard Time) at the Venus altitude of about 68,000 km"

"By Longwave IR camera (LIR) at around 2:19 p.m. on Dec. 7 (Japan Standard Time) at the Venus altitude of about 72,000 km"


These were images taken on December 9th, 2010 at 600,000 km away as part of a health check before the failed orbit insertion.

Left to right: ultraviolet imager (UVI), and 1 micron camera (IR1), long wave infrared camera (LIR). Images are artificially colored (UVI image - blue; IR1 image - red)

 

[ultratruman]

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emil...first.html?referrer=https://www.google.co.uk/

My Rocket Scientist Can't Be This Cute!

 

[cameron]

Bump for planetary science.

Nature: "Rescued Japanese spacecraft delivers first results from Venus"

After an unplanned five-year detour, Japan’s Venus probe, Akatsuki, has come back to life with a bang. On 4–8 April, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) presented the first scientific results from the spacecraft since it was rescued from an errant orbit around the Sun and rerouted to circle Venus, four months ago. These include a detailed shot of streaked, acidic clouds and a mysterious moving ‘bow’ shape in the planet’s atmosphere.

Despite the probe’s tumble around the Solar System, its instruments are working “almost perfectly”, Akatsuki project manager Masato Nakamura, a planetary scientist at JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Sagamihara, Japan, announced at the Inter­national Venus Conference in Oxford, UK. And if another small manoeuvre in two years’ time is successful, he said, the spacecraft might avoid Venus’s solar-power-draining shadow, and so be able to orbit the planet for five years, rather than the two it was initially assigned.

A highly detailed shot of dense layers within Venus’s sulfuric acid clouds elicited applause from the audience. The highest-quality infrared image of this view of Venus, it suggests that the processes that underlie cloud formation might be more complicated than thought, project scientist Takeshi Imamura told attendees.

And the team expects still better results to come. The image was taken from 100,000 kilometres away — more than 10 times the probe’s distance at its closest pass of Venus. “We will achieve better spatial resolution still,” said Takehiko Satoh, principal investigator for the probe’s 2-micrometre infrared camera, IR2, which took the image. “We promise to give a fantastic data set to the research community for years.”

The bow shape, which was seen in thermal images taken using a long-wave infrared (LIR) camera, provided some intrigue. The moving cloud formation, which swept from pole to pole across the planet for days, seemed to rotate with Venus’s surface, rather than with its much quicker-moving atmosphere.

The motion suggests that the front could be linked to features on the ground, said Makoto Taguchi, who leads the LIR camera. Others at the conference were at a loss as to what may have caused it. “It’s certainly mysterious,” says planetary scientist Suzanne Smrekar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Streaked clouds and a mysterious ‘bow’ shape. ISAS/JAXA

But Akatsuki’s new lease of life comes with compromises, too. Its current 10.5-day operational orbit takes it almost 5 times as far from Venus at its most distant point than its original intended orbit (see ‘Orbital alteration’). Except for those taken during the short period when the probe sweeps close to the planet, images will be lower in resolution than planned. This means that studies that require detail, such as spotting flashes of lightning, will take longer. But the team said that it plans to make the best of the probe’s wide orbit to take whole-Venus images that track large-scale features over time.

As an aside, I wish there were more active extraterrestrial orbiters.

Mercury had Messenger, which was deorbited last year. ;_;
Venus now has Akatsuki.
Mars has several (Maven, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, and Mars Orbiter Mission).
Jupiter will have Juno, which will arrive in July
Saturn has Cassini

Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto don't have anything. That is unacceptable.

 

[abstract alien]

What an odd pattern

 

[thehypocrite]

Trippy.

 

[Slayven]

Fuck mars send a manned mission to Venus

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

The bow moving with the planet's rotation makes it sound like a sunside heat bubble or zephyr or something especially since the planet's day is so long

 

[Youta Mottenai]

While space exploration doesn’t usually allow for second chances, Akatsuki got another shot at Venus after zipping past the planet on its first attempt in December of 2010, the result of a main engine failure during a crucial orbital-insertion burn. Akatsuki, which means ‘dawn’ or ‘daybreak’ in Japanese, spent five years orbiting the sun so it could catch up with Venus and try again.

This is freaking amazing!

 

[Zapages]

very interesting about the bow and the clouds... I remember reading about the Russian mission to Venus and the probe getting destroyed/malfunctioning due to Venus's environment.

 

[Shmuppers]

Fuck mars send a manned mission to Venus

There aren't enough words to describe how dead you would be if you went anywhere near Venus

Even with equipment

 

[GuyKazama]

There aren't enough words to describe how dead you would be if you went anywhere near Venus

Even with equipment

50km up in the clouds of Venus is the most habitable area of the solar system other than earth.

 

[GTP_Daverytimes]

50km up in the clouds of Venus is the most habitable area of the solar system other than earth.

I've seen illustrations of hoe it would be to live there, basically floating cities.

 

[Shmuppers]

50km up in the clouds of Venus is the most habitable area of the solar system other than earth.

Isn't the Venusian atmosphere mostly carbon dioxide?

 

[HStallion]

50km up in the clouds of Venus is the most habitable area of the solar system other than earth.

I'm all for the Lando Calrissian Cloud City Colony floating in the skies of Venus.

 

[GuyKazama]

Isn't the Venusian atmosphere mostly carbon dioxide?

Yeah, you'd need a mask for oxygen, but no space suit.

 

[Hellsing321]

This is freaking amazing!

I see JAXA has been watching Project B.E.A.S.T.

 

[kami_sama]

There aren't enough words to describe how dead you would be if you went anywhere near Venus

Even with equipment

Well, the Russians sent a probe and it took the only images we have of the surface.

It malfunctioned after less than an hour due to the heat.

 

[Rentahamster]

Isn't the Venusian atmosphere mostly carbon dioxide?

Yeah, but the problems of pressure, temperature, and cosmic radiation, are less severe than most other places outside of Earth.