Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter |
Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter |
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![]() Senior Member ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 ![]() |
I thought it was time to start a separate thread on this mission, launching soon
some good medium-resolution images of the spacecraft are available on JAXA digital archives http://jda.jaxa.jp/jda/p3_e.php?time=N&...mp;mission=4066 |
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#2
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![]() Administrator ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 ![]() |
Some Japanese followers of mine on Twitter have said that it's actually not December 2016 they were discussing, but June 2016. Also, apparently the choice of 2016 for orbit entry isn't as set in stone as Yomiuri makes it seem. At the press briefing they seemed to have been discussing trade-offs between degradation of the orbiter's systems and the fact that with every Venus swingby they do, they can improve the scientifically useful characteristics of the orbit they can achieve on the next encounter.
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#3
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Member ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 817 Joined: 17-April 10 From: Kamakura, Japan Member No.: 5323 ![]() |
The Sankei newspaper here carried an article about Akatsuki's failure as follows. Time stamp for this article is 19:24 31 January 2012. I believe that this will be the general public's understanding of this failure. It goes as follows.
"Failure cause is bad design. Venus probe Akatsuki, fuel did not reach its engine. 19:24 31 January 2012." "Space Activities Comission (SAC) accepted a report submitted by JAXA on the causes of orbit insertion failure of Akatsuki that the failure was due to the valve mulfunctioning which prevented the flow of fuel to the engine. According to this report a larger than assumed amount of salt was formed during the 6 months flight to Venus by the reaction of evaporated oxidiser and fuel. This adhered to the valve for the fuel tank, preventing opening of the valve for fuel supply. The reaction between the oxidiser and fuel itself had been predicted at the desing stage. However, the design team failed to predict that the valve component problem would lead to more than 100 times the amount of oxidiser migrating into fuel than assumed. Adding to this, part of inspection and testing had also been skipped due to cost and time constraints. Prof Y Inatani of JAXA commented that it was outside their expectation and that a well thought design should have prevented it during the design stage. Akatsuki is still flying, powered by smaller engines with a view to trying re-insertion in 2016." P |
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