What will a Japanese space probe find on Venus?

A Japanese probe has successfully entered the orbit of Venus, the country’s space agency confirmed today, five years after it missed on the first attempt due to an engine failure.

Japan’s space agency has announced that its Akatsuki probe has just entered into orbit around Venus after failing to reach the planet five years ago – but what will it find on our mysterious neighbor?

JAXA officially confirmed injecting Akatsuki into designated Venus’ orbit.

Jaxa said it will deploy the three scientific mission on the spacecraft and check their functions.

The successful Venus orbit came a week after another Japanese space probe, “Hayabusa 2”, passed by Earth to harness the planet’s gravitational pull to propel it towards a far away asteroid in its quest to study the origin of the solar system. “As a result of measuring and calculating the Akatsuki’s orbit after its thrust ejection, the orbiter is now flying on the elliptical orbit at the periapsis altitude of about 400 kilometres (250 miles) and apoapsis altitude of about 440,000 kilometres (273,000 miles) from Venus”.

This image of Venus was taken by the UVI instrument on JAXA’s Akatsuki orbiter from a distance of about 44,700 miles (72,000 km) on December 7, 2015.

Check out some of Akatsuki’s images below. Akatsuki is moving according to direction of Venus rotation. The shift toward a mission that studies how Venus changes over time means that Akatsuki’s mission will be a better one, the longer and more continuously the spacecraft manages to operate in orbit; a two-year mission is the nominal plan, but Nakamura and Imamura expressed hope that it could be extended beyond that. The agency plans to check the function of three additional science instruments while gradually adjusting the orbit to a period of about nine days.

The science phase of the mission will begin in April 2016.

In 2010, Akatsuki was sacked up on a 25.2 billion yen ($205 million) mission where it was aiming to observe Venus’ very-hot volcanic surface and its toxic atmosphere. The image captures Venus’s wild clouds, along with the upward diffusion of sulphur dioxide (SO2 ) from atmospheric circulation.