IKAROS JAXA Solar Sail mission Options

[Vultur]

IKAROS sounds really cool, is there any website to find more info on it?

[punkboi]

IKAROS sounds really cool, is there any website to find more info on it?

Project Page: http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/ikaros/index_e.html

Photos: http://jda.jaxa.jp/jda/p3_e.php?mode=level...mp;mission=9095

Description Page: http://www.jspec.jaxa.jp/e/activity/ikaros.html

[Paolo]

can't wait to read the rest of the translation! many thanks in advance Pandaneko!

[pandaneko]

Page 14:

3: Orbit plan (from launch to Venus)

launch: 21 May 2010
nearest approach to Venus: 8 December 2010

(There are 2 graphs here and this page must be self-explanetary, P)

Caption at the top of the left graph says "Nearest approach to Venus on 8 December 2010", and the caption at bottom is "launch on 21 May 2010". At the centre is the sun, Venus green, earth blue.

Caption at the top of the right graph is "Sun-Earth fixed system". At the centre is the sun and Venus green, and the character string just below IKAROS (in red) is the Earth

Page 15:

3: Orbit plan (from nearest approach to Venus to the end of fiscal 2011)

Black square: nearest approach to Venus on 8 December 2010
Black diamond: 31 March 2012

(There are 2 graphs here)

With the left graph the sun is at the centre and the caption at the top is "nearest approach to Venus on 8 December 2010"

With the right graph the caption at the top is "Sun-Earth fixed system", sun at the centre, Earth is the blue dot on the right, IKAROS movement in red.

Page 16:

3: Orbit plan (from fiscal year end of 2011 to the furthest point)

black diamond: 31 March 2012
black star: 6 December 2012

(There are 2 graphs here)

2 captions at the bottom of the lefthand graph, the left one says "furthest point on 26 December 2012" and the one on the right says "31 March 2012".

With the right hand graph, my earlier comments apply.

Page 17:

3: Operational policy for the latter half of IKAROS operation

Given the limited coms capacity our operational policy is as follows:

3.1 February 2011:

attitude/orbit determination (new themes 3 and 4, continuation 3)

confirmation of sail extension and power generation (continuation 1 and 2)

GAP operation and reproduction of ALDN observation data

3.2 May, June 2011:

attitude/orbit determination (new themes 3 and 4, continuation 1 and 2)

confirmation of sail extension and power generation (continuation 1 and 2)

reproduction of GAP, ALDN data, engineering experiment with VLBI

attitude/orbit determination upon changing spin rate and sun angle (new themes 1 and 2)

3.3 July 2011 and beyond:

We will make our judgement based on the results obtained by June.

Current tentative plan is as follows:

We are going to change the spin rate and the sun angle over a very wide range and;

1. If we can improve coms status we will try a longer operation by economising on fuel.

2. If we cannot improve coms status asa result we will still try to economise on fuel and try to maintain MGA's link attitude.

P