{"id":15885,"date":"2015-12-06T21:54:20","date_gmt":"2015-12-06T13:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/japanese-probe-fires-rockets-to-steer-into-orbit-at-venus\/"},"modified":"2015-12-06T21:54:20","modified_gmt":"2015-12-06T13:54:20","slug":"japanese-probe-fires-rockets-to-steer-into-orbit-at-venus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/japanese-probe-fires-rockets-to-steer-into-orbit-at-venus\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese probe fires rockets to steer into orbit at Venus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated at 0315 GMT (10:15 p.m. EST)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Artist's
Artist\u2019s concept of the Akatsuki spacecraft.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Five years after missing a shot to enter orbit at Venus, Japan\u2019s Akatsuki spacecraft completed a critical rocket burn late Sunday in a bid to salvage the research mission and become the only space probe operating around Earth\u2019s nearest planetary neighbor.<\/p>\n

Four maneuvering thrusters were scheduled to ignite at 2351 GMT (6:51 p.m. EST) Sunday for approximately 20 minutes and 30 seconds to slow down the Akatsuki probe enough for Venus\u2019 gravity to capture it into an elongated, high-altitude orbit.<\/p>\n

Akatsuki was never designed to fire its secondary attitude control rocket jets for such a long time, but the thrusters were required to steer the craft into orbit after its main engine failed during the mission\u2019s first encounter with Venus exactly five years ago.<\/p>\n

Officials confirmed the burn went as planned early Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is in orbit!\u201d wrote Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist based at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, in an email to Spaceflight Now.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were cautiously optimistic before the burn, but confident. Now smiling!\u201d reported Limaye from Akatsuki\u2019s mission control center in Sagamihara, Japan. He is is a NASA-sponsored participating scientist on the Akatsuki mission.<\/p>\n

It could take a few days to precisely measure Akatsuki\u2019s trajectory to verify it is in the proper orbit around Venus, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result of analyzing data transmitted from the orbiter, we confirmed that the thrust emission of the attitude control engine was conducted for about 20 minutes as scheduled,\u201d the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said in a press release Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe orbiter is now in good health,\u201d JAXA said. \u201cWe are currently measuring and calculating its orbit after the operation. It will take a few days to estimate the orbit, thus we will announce the operation result once it is determined.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reaction control thrusters, originally designed to help point the spacecraft, were not rated for such a hefty propulsive maneuver.<\/p>\n

Venus was 149.5 million kilometers, or nearly 93 million miles, from Earth at the time of Akatsuki\u2019s arrival Sunday. It took radio signals more than 8 minutes to travel at the speed of light between the two planets.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft\u2019s guidance system targeted an orbit with a high point stretching up to 475,000 kilometers (295,000 miles) from Venus, farther than the distance of the moon from Earth, according to Takeshi Imamura, Akatsuki\u2019s project scientist at JAXA\u2019s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science.<\/p>\n

The smaller thrusters aboard Akatsuki generate just 5 pounds of thrust, a fraction of the power provided by the probe\u2019s main engine. Even with four of the rocket jets operating \u2014 there are two sets of four pointing forward and aft from Akatsuki\u2019s main body \u2014 the secondary thrusters did not have the energy to put the spacecraft into its originally planned orbit.<\/p>\n