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 ...
An “energetic event” could be a battery failure, including it blowing up, or a short circuit in the electronics. It could also include not shielding the electronics from solar radiation. Satellites tend to build up a static charge and if it isn’t dissipated could cause the system to fail. However, never rule out space junk hitting it.
Looks like it’s in a pretty rough neighborhood there. Seems to have taken a wrong turn and gone a few parsecs beyond its intended destination. Hope that hasty thing on the left doesn’t suck it in.
Software automatically updated to Windows 10, which was not compatible with the navigation hardware?
...or Drax?!
Sad. We would have learned much.
Gravity was awesome. Sandra Bullock is aging but I’d still hit that.
Thanks BenLurkin, extra to APoD.
Hey mom guess what I found just floating in space! Can I keep it?
DWA - in space.
Seriously, they named the satellite “hit me” ?
The Chinese currently have a better anti-satellite capability than we do. We mothballed/scrapped ours and pretend that our SM3 BMD missiles can do the job.
“... that some kind of “energetic event” has occurred...”
Maybe they shouldn’t have named it Hit-o-me.
LOL!
Chicoms testing one of their new (stolen from the USA) sat-killers?
You’d think that if anyone had that sort of technology, they’d make a fortune with a shuttle service. If they really wanted to do great harm, they’d go into politics.
The Science Patrol will solve this.
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