Orbit Success! It’s a New Dawn for Japan’s Venus Mission

After spending the last five years essentially lost in space, the Japanese probe Akatsuki fired up its engines this last weekend in hopes of finally entering the orbit of Venus.

During Akatsuki’s 2010 attempt, instead of positioning itself to fly into Venus’s elliptical equatorial orbit, the spacecraft’s malfunctioning engine’s prevented it from properly braking.

Whether the probe successfully entered orbit around Venus will be announced on Wednesday, after the end of data measurement and analysis, said JAXA, whose control room for operating Akatsuki is located in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture.

It will take the mission team a few days to measure the spacecraft’s trajectory, confirm the orbit, and download images, although Limaye couldn’t confirm when photos of the insertion would be released to the public. “We are now measuring and calculating its orbit after the operation”. They then started a series of orbital adjustments using the 12 attitude thrusters on Akatsuki, which were low power but could be run from the main hydrazine fuel tank for longer burns to get the probe into position.

Akatsuki performed the engine burn Sunday at 6:51 p.m. EST (2351 GMT; 8:51 a.m. on December 7 Japan Standard Time), according to the JAXA update.

The $300 million Akatsuki mission, whose name means “Dawn” in Japanese, launched in May 2010 to study the clouds, weather and atmosphere of Venus, with the aim of helping scientists understand how the planet ended up so much hotter and less life-friendly than Earth.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has confirmed that a careful combination of telematics, testing, and tentative orbital corrections have put the atmospheric probe into orbit around Venus, albeit half-a-decade later than planned.

Japan attempted its first Mars probe with Nozomi in 2003 and failed. Akatsuki went sailing towards the Sun, rather than into orbit around Venus.

If today’s maneuver will be successful, the Akatsuki will achieve most of its objectives however the mission has already changed in numerous aspects.