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]

just one question: what are they talking about when speaking of "1970", "1990" etc in page 30?

[pandaneko]

just one question: what are they talking about when speaking of "1970", "1990" etc in page 30?

Thanks and apologies for not translating fully. You can actually ask for further translations any time you wish.

The top graph is cosmic dusts distribution in space nearer to the Sun than the Earth.

Vertical axis is the flux and the horizontal is heliocentric distance in AU.

Character string at the top left of this graph is IKAROS (2010), down below it in red is Helios 1 (1970's) and just to the right of it is the counting by Galileo (1990's).

Two characters at the bottom left is : Venus orbit, right : Earth orbit

There are two small graphs at the bottom and one on left is IKAROS orbit, and the one on the right is IKAROS orbit with respect to the Sun-Earth fixed frame of reference.

Here below, I will paste the main text and hope it will succeed.

Page 30: Supplementary information on ALDN

Operational results:

(1) Large area dust counter started operation on 21 June 2010. Dusts larger than a few micron size were recorded on all of the 8 channells. A little more than 100 dusts were counted during 25 days starting on 30 June and this number is larger than the count recorded by a German counter (MDC) on board NOZOMI during 45 months from August 1998.

(2) Study of dusts distribution dependence on heliocentric distance

Earlier countings during 1970's and 1990's were somewhat uncertain in accuracy in time resolution. IKAROS data seems to show a continuous rise in the flux as we approach Venus. We may get more information as we continute to operate IKAROS.

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