Posted on 03/27/2016 5:24:14 PM PDT by BenLurkin
On Saturday, Japan lost contact with its newest space telescope, called Hitomi or ASTRO-H. The telescope, which includes an instrument from NASA, was intended to study the high-energy universe in X-rays and gamma rays, and observe such objects as supermassive black holes and galaxy clusters.
Radar observations Sunday indicated that Hitomi, which launched on February 17, is in at least five pieces—and a plot of its orbit revealed a dramatic change on March 26, the date JAXA lost contact with the spacecraft.
That means, says astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, that some kind of “energetic event” has occurred—something more than a simple failure of communications.
...
It’s not clear exactly what has happened on board Hitomi. Scientists are currently investigating the situation, and JAXA reports that it has gotten a trickle of a signal from the spacecraft. That means it’s possible the five pieces detected by radar are things like insulation, rather than large chunks of debris resulting from a catastrophic explosion; it’s also possible the spacecraft is tumbling, McDowell says, and that signals from Hitomi are periodically sweeping across the Earth.
(Excerpt) Read more at phenomena.nationalgeographic.com ...
bad news for astronomy ping
North Korea?
Spy satellite gone bye bye.
I’m not saying it was aliens...
but it was aliens!
Blofield!
Oops. I hope they find it again.
China?
Not NK.
Collision with meteorite or man made space debris? It’s happed before to a couple of satellites.
That’s too bad. Sounds like something got “over-pressurized” - leading to
Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly
It’s not lost. It’s blown up. They’re tracking the pieces on radar.
NO!
Oops my bad. It’s not blown up. (ought to read the article I suppose)
China has done this before in test exercises YEARS ago.
By now I’m completely sure their capabilities are dramatically enhanced.
Japan ALWAYS terms it’s spy satellites something else, like enviro stuff.
Probably the Chinese determination was this bird could give early warning of Chinese naval movements.
Oh, that’s bad.
They did NOT do this this time:
It would have been some form of directed energy, would be my guess.
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