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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...

Explanation: On February 17 at 5:45pm JST this H-IIA rocket blasted skyward from JAXA's Tanegashima Space Center located off the southern coast of Japan, planet Earth. Onboard was the ASTRO-H X-ray astronomy satellite, now in orbit. Designed to explore the extreme cosmos from black holes to massive galaxy clusters, the satellite observatory is equipped with four cutting-edge X-ray telescopes and instruments sensitive to photon energies from 300 to 600,000 electron volts. By comparison, visible light photon energies are 2 to 3 electron volts. Following a tradition of renaming satellites after their successful launch, ASTRO-H has been newly dubbed "Hitomi", inspired...