No communications with new Japanese X-ray telescope
Bad news: Engineers have not been able to establish communications with Japan’s new X-ray telescope, Hitomi, since it was launched last month.
The JAXA announcement is very terse, and somewhat unclear, as its wording suggests that communications were not scheduled to begin until yesterday, even though the spacecraft was launched February 17. To me that does not sound right. Regardless, failure to establish communications at the beginning of a flight is usually a very bad thing, as it usually means something fundamental failed at launch and is thus difficult to fix or overcome.
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Bad news: Engineers have not been able to establish communications with Japan’s new X-ray telescope, Hitomi, since it was launched last month.
The JAXA announcement is very terse, and somewhat unclear, as its wording suggests that communications were not scheduled to begin until yesterday, even though the spacecraft was launched February 17. To me that does not sound right. Regardless, failure to establish communications at the beginning of a flight is usually a very bad thing, as it usually means something fundamental failed at launch and is thus difficult to fix or overcome.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
That’s a shame. Another example that there is nothing routine about space.
Your immediately previous post and this one, in combination, form a kind of ironic pair. Too bad the DARPA fixerbot vehicle isn’t available right now. I think JAXA would be very interested.
Japan has a very ambitious and broad space program, ranging from their own launchers, own GPS, great planetary and astrophysical missions and even talk about an own human spaceflight program. And they go for doing it alone without much international corporation, as a sharp contrast to ESA which seeks to specialize on components in international missions (which rarely happen because they are international with a multitude of political interests to feed). And JAXA has only about a tenth of NASA’s budget. But their success rate is not so good. They’ve missed orbital insertions at both Venus and Mars, Hayabusa got very small sample from its asteroid, and other satellites have failed too. But their launcher works fine, so there are different causes for the failures.
Reading about Nozomi, the failed JAXA mission to Mars launched 1998 is interesting. A Lunar flyby and two Earth flybys to get to Mars, that’s unusual. A valve failed, then a solar storm damaged the electric system so that fuel froze but could be thawed, could not be inserted in Mars’ orbit. Many things go wrong. Maybe they are trying to do it too cheap or are over ambitious? With a larger launcher, or lighter payload, they could’ve gone to Mars directly, like everyone else always has done, and the problems would not have occurred.