Japanese satellite Akatsuki orbits Venus

The Japanese space agency Jaxa has successfully launched the Akatsuki space probe into orbit around Venus. The probe was supposed to arrive at Venus in late 2010, but failed, after which the probe entered orbit around the sun.

Jaxa made some course adjustments in the meantime and managed to get Akatsuki back in the right direction. The probe was ordered from the command center at just before 9 a.m. Japanese time on December 7 to fire all four thrusters simultaneously. After about twenty minutes, the probe came close enough to the gravitational pull of Venus to orbit this planet.

The next two days will be used to find out if Akatsuki has landed in the hoped-for orbit around the planet, Jaxa writes on his site. If all goes well, the probe is a little further from Venus than intended, namely in the highly elliptical orbit or heo. The probe will then be several thousand kilometers from Venus, instead of the planned several hundred kilometers. It is expected that the majority of scientific goals should also be attainable at that distance, but that it will take longer to collect the information. The spacecraft carries five cameras that can capture wavelengths from infrared to ultraviolet to analyze the planet’s atmosphere.

Akatsuki was launched in May 2010 on a mission to study the atmosphere of Venus. On December 7, 2010, something went wrong. Salts had settled on a valve between the helium tank and a fuel tank. The blockage caused a nozzle on the propulsion system to break, causing Akatsuki to drift toward the sun. To make the probe more steerable, the researchers discharged 65 kg of fuel into space. Now, five years later, it was still possible to get the probe into orbit with four of the eight thrusters.