Five years after failing to enter orbit around Venus, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Akatsuki probe was able to successfully complete an attitude control engine thrust operation, and is now traveling around Earth’s closest planetary neighbor.
JAXA officials confirmed Akatsuki’s successful orbital insertion in a statement, reporting that it was in good health and that they were “currently measuring and calculating” its orbit following a scheduled 20-minute long thrust emission of the attitude control engine.
The agency said that it would “take a few days to estimate the orbit” and that more information would be released at that time. According to Popular Mechanics, “everything had to go just right for the probe to enter an elliptical orbit” around Venus—an orbit that will bring it to within 186 miles of the surface at its closest approach and up 50,000 miles away at its most distant.
Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist from the University of Wisconsin who is participating in the Akatsuki mission, confirmed that the probe was in orbit, according to Astronomy Now. It is now the only probe orbiting Venus, and will now begin analyzing the planet’s surface and atmosphere using a suite of instruments—including one that will search for active volcanoes.
Science phase of the mission expected to begin in March
The Akatuski’s story’s happy ending comes five years to the day when the spacecraft’s failed to enter orbit around Venus and drifted off into space, and marks a rare second opportunity for such a probe to attempt and complete its mission, Popular Mechanics explained on Monday.
That initial orbital insertion maneuver failed when thermal issues caused the orbiter to enter safe mode prior to its encounter with Venus, and JAXA scientists were unable to restore it to its full operational status in time to complete the necessary maneuvers. Now, due largely to some high-precision thruster firings, it had a second chance to pull it off and did so successfully.
Takeshi Imamura, Akatsuki project scientist with the JAXA Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, told Astronomy Now that the probe’s guidance system had targeted an orbit with a high point stretching up to 295,000 miles from Venus, but its secondary thrusters lacked the power to achieve the originally planned orbit—meaning it will take longer to travel around the planet.
Following an adjustment in March that will reduce Akatsuki’s orbital period from 15 days to 9, the orbiter’s science mission will begin. Imamura told the website that the plan is for this phase to last at least two Earth years, but precise estimates were impossible due to questions over the spacecraft’s remaining fuel supply.
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Feature Image: JAXA
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