{"id":15553,"date":"2016-04-29T20:17:26","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T12:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/japan-gives-up-on-rescuing-black-hole-observatory\/"},"modified":"2016-04-29T20:17:26","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T12:17:26","slug":"japan-gives-up-on-rescuing-black-hole-observatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/japan-gives-up-on-rescuing-black-hole-observatory\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan gives up on rescuing black hole observatory"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Artist\u2019s
Artist\u2019s concept of Japan\u2019s Hitomi satellite. Credit: JAXA\/Akihiro Ikeshita<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Japan\u2019s space agency says it has ceased efforts to rescue a failed X-ray astronomy satellite after it spun out of control and broke apart in orbit, declaring the nearly $400 million mission lost two months after its launch.<\/p>\n

Controllers on the ground lost contact with the Hitomi mission March 26 after a series of attitude control failures caused the satellite spin up and shed critical segments of its solar panels, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.<\/p>\n

Officials said Thursday that signals thought to be from the Hitomi spacecraft, also known as Astro-H, received by ground controllers after the satellite\u2019s March 26 failure turned out not to be from the observatory.<\/p>\n

\u201cJAXA has also received information from several overseas organizations that indicated the separation of the two solar array paddles from Astro-H,\u201d the agency said in a statement. \u201cConsidering this information, we have determined that we cannot restore the Astro-H\u2019s functions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hitomi X-ray observatory launched Feb. 17 on a mission designed to last at least three years.<\/p>\n

Its objectives included studying black holes and giant galactic clusters, the largest structures in the universe.<\/p>\n

JAXA said engineers will now determine the cause of the mission\u2019s premature failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will carefully review all phases from design, manufacturing, verification, and operations to identify the causes that may have led to this anomaly including background factors,\u201d JAXA said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"Japanese
Japanese ground crews ready the Hitomi spacecraft for liftoff in February. Credit: JAXA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Described by scientists as the flagship X-ray astronomy project of the decade, Hitomi carried a suite of instruments sensitive to a wide range of energies on the electromagnetic spectrum, from so-called \u201csoft\u201d X-rays around 300 electron volts to \u201csoft\u201d gamma rays up to 600,000 electron volts. For comparison, visible light photons are measured around 2 or 3 electron volts.<\/p>\n

Such high-energy light beams do not penetrate Earth\u2019s atmosphere, meaning the X-ray universe is only observable by sending a satellite into orbit. X-ray telescopes allow observations of black holes, which form in the aftermath of violent supernova explosions, and large-scale structures of the universe.<\/p>\n

Formed by the powerful supernova explosions of old stars, black holes give off X-rays as they ingest matter, sending emissions through the universe that can only be detected by telescopes like the sensors aboard Hitomi.<\/p>\n

Hitomi carried a NASA-developed X-ray spectrometer to measure the composition and velocity of super-heated matter surround black holes. Astronomers expected the detector to send back unrivaled data about the complicated environment around the compact skeletons of stars.<\/p>\n

The core of the X-ray spectrometer was a \u201cmicrocalorimeter\u201d unlike any successfully flown before. The researchers in charge of the instrument tried to fly it on a mission that eventually became NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory, but officials kept the spectrometer off Chandra due to budget concerns.<\/p>\n

NASA partnered with Japan to launch the instrument on an X-ray observatory in 2000, but that mission was lost in a launch mishap. Japan\u2019s follow-up X-ray telescope launched with a replacement NASA-built spectrometer in 2005, but the sensor failed before collecting science data.<\/p>\n

The science team behind microcalorimeter technology now has to contend with another failure.<\/p>\n

The cutting edge instrument was able to take measurements of Crab Nebula and the Perseus galaxy cluster before Hitomi went silent last month.<\/p>\n

Chandra is the workhorse for astronomers pursuing research in those areas. Europe\u2019s XMM-Newton space telescope is also an asset for X-ray astronomers. But both missions launched in 1999 and are functioning well beyond their designed lifetimes.<\/p>\n

The NuSTAR X-ray telescope developed by NASA is also available, but its sensor is not as capable as the instruments lost aboard Hitomi.<\/p>\n

Scientists may have to wait for the next large X-ray mission on the books. The European Space Agency-led Athena X-ray observatory is expected to launch in 2028.<\/p>\n

\u201cJAXA expresses the deepest regret for the fact that we had to discontinue the operations of Astro-H and extends our most sincere apologies to everyone who has supported Astro-H, believing in the excellent results Astro-H would bring, to all overseas and domestic partners, including NASA, and to all foreign and Japanese astrophysicists who were planning to use the observational results from Astro-H for their studies,\u201d the agency said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s concept of Japan\u2019s Hitomi satellite. Credit: JAXA\/Akihiro Ikeshita Japan\u2019s space agency says it has ceased efforts to rescue a failed X-ray astronomy satellite after it spun out of control and broke apart in orbit, declaring the nearly $400 million mission lost two months after its launch. Controllers on the ground lost contact with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3661,1690,1663,377,877,3250],"class_list":["post-15553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astro-h","tag-astrophysics","tag-hitomi","tag-japan","tag-jaxa","tag-x-rays"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15553"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}