Japan's Space Agency Loses Contact With New X-Ray Telescope Satellite "Hitomi" 77
As carried here by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Associated Press reports that Japanese space agency JAXA reports that it has lost contact with its new satellite "Hitomi," deployed last month and designed to explore deep space with X-ray telescopes. The AP story linked quotes Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who surmises that an "energetic event" has sent the craft into a tumble. The agency's release on the failure is terse, but leaves some room for hope:
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) found that communication with the X-ray Astronomy Satellite âoeHitomiâ (ASTRO-H), launched on February 17, 2016 (JST), failed from the start of its operation originally scheduled at 16:40, Saturday March 26 (JST). Up to now, JAXA has not been able to figure out the state of health of the satellite.
While the cause of communication failure is under investigation, JAXA received short signal from the satellite, and is working for recovery.
Energetic event? (Score:3)
I don't know about that satellite, but when I'm floating around in a vacuum and I have an energetic event, I feel pretty messed up.
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the poor guy who has to clean your gore and brains off the wall(s), ceiling, and floor
You can be that guy.
http://store.steampowered.com/... [steampowered.com]
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Ommon is the dialect they speak in his village.
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I'm thinking likely some of the "strike by object" combined with "pressure release."
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It is from Japan, it is probably written in Ruby or C.
Lemme guess: MADE in JAPAN? (Score:1)
No space truckin' for you!
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Probably because "Space Janitors" isn't the most interesting thing to premise your series on.
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Whoosh on the whole thread.
Old man on AC OP.
Kids: Deep Purple (they were a heavy metal band, you know 'Smoke on the Water') made an live album, in japan, including a song that the old AC tried to make a joke on.
Old man on me too. My ears rang for a week. Never seen so many people puking drunk at one event. It was pretty gross.
On second thought: Except Rolla's 'Extravaganza' where puking is part of the festivities and contests.
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As long as they send the stereotypical giant stompy robots, I'm happy with the result.
Who doesn't like giant stompy robots?
I would guess people in the vicinity of the giant stompy parts...
But I'm just guessing...
Re:Never Forget (Score:2)
Who doesn't like giant stompy robots?
I would guess people in the vicinity of the giant stompy parts...
Yeah, just look at how people reacted when the Martian stompy bots arrived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Hit-o-mi baby one more time (Score:1)
Worse than that: this spacecraft has broken up. (Score:5, Informative)
Sourced from the competition of things you may have read:
https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/714113400008286208 :
Oh this is very very bad. From @spacetrackorg "Breakup Notification: [...] ASTRO H at approx 0820z, 26 Mar 16: 5 associated pieces .."
Suspected causes are a MMOD hit, battery explosion or cryo system overpressure. Suggestoin that "It's too early to write the satellite's obituary", but any good news is very unlikely.
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Oh this is very very bad. From @spacetrackorg "Breakup Notification: [...] ASTRO H at approx 0820z, 26 Mar 16: 5 associated pieces .."
I'm guessing Hitomi got taken out by the Mobile Fortresses.
Re:Worse than that: this spacecraft has broken up. (Score:5, Interesting)
The odds of it being a MMOD, especially given how little time it's been in orbit, is very low. Conversely, the fact that broke up so early in the mission would reinforce a hardware failure of some kind (battery explosion or cryo system overpressure as you said).
MMOD: Micrometeoroid / Orbital Debris (Score:5, Informative)
Micrometeoroids and Orbital Debris [nasa.gov]
For a change, this is pretty much exactly what I had guessed upon seeing an unfamiliar acronym.
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Bummer about the mission.
I wonder if McDowell actually got permission to post that twit --- the ToU of space-track.org seem pretty strict:
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That does surprise me as a possibility, as fitting bursting discs and such-like venting systems is pretty common in ground systems. But I guess that may increase the number of possible points of failure, which would change the calculus of risk.
Anyone would think it was rocket science!
Japan's what? (Score:2)
who writes these headlines?
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He's been with Slashdot for how long, and timothy still tries to paste Unicode?
"Satellite âoeHitomiâ (ASTRO-H)"
I'm not too sure how to pronounce that.
ASTRO-H is easier - that has to be pronounced Astro-Ecchi, right?
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Like a backup musician in GWAR. He's only 'timothy' while he has the job.
Alternatively think of it like a punk band that fires their drummer as soon as he starts to keep time. To keep up their image.
'timothy' better keep pasting Unicode if he wants those sweet sweet /. dollars to keep rolling.
Aliens (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm not saying it was aliens; but... Aliens.
Man I wish my mod points hadn't expired. You're 100% correct and I can prove it.
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No great loss. The pictures it would have returned were bound to be heavily pixelated anyway.
Slashdot: Fix unicode bugs please! (Score:1)
âoeHitomiâ
barf
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One of the reasons I use SoylentNews - they actually bothered to use a fixed version of Slash that doesn't have these problems.
Pisses me off that I can't put in a simple currency sign: £
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That might be a failing on your part. €, £, $, and as this is Japan, ¥. Or did you want ©, ñ, or ü?
< © — €
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Nope. I type the £ symbol on my keyboard, into a standard browser, that works on EVERY OTHER WEBSITE IN THE WORLD, even "just works" in Notepad, etc. And I get that shit.
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Actually, only some of them are posted as HTML entities. Hit my post's reply button and click on the quote parent and all will become clear. I'll reply to the other guy as well.
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What button is that? Try using the AltGr keys. In Windows, use the US International (though I think others work) and they insert it just fine. (I've done it, many times.)
The other poster said I used the HTML entities. That is only partially true. lt gt mdash ndash are entities, as is euro. The others are inserted with the keyboard.
€’£¼½¾÷¦”“ÖÓÍÚÜËÉÉÅÄäåéëüúíóö
Slashdot needs to fix it's commenting system NOW (Score:1)
As you can see from these posts, Slashdot's allowance of anonymous posts is to its detriment. End Anonymous Cowards, and put in a real vote up/down system that allows everyone to vote on every post.
Whatever... (Score:3)