Japanese Plans For Jupiter And Trojans, Solar Sail Ion Propulsion Orbiter Drop Probe Options

[ljk4-1]

On the February 22, 2006 launch of their Akari infrared observatory
satellite, JAXA also included a solar sail test and, according to the news
article attached here, they are planning a solar sail-ion propulsion
orbiter/drop probe mission to Jupiter and a Trojan Planetoid.


Experiments to deploy the solar sail

Launch: 21st/Feb/2006 6:28(JST)

The 20m class solar sail film of fan type will be launched as a sub-payload of ASTRO-F (Infrared Imaging Surveyor). JAXA's Solar Sail uses the centrifugal force to deploy and to keep the tension of the film. In this experiment, the deployment speed of the film is gradually changed, and they observe it with two cameras.

Future mission

The solar sail mission to the Jupiter starts if the plan is approved in the committee next month. The explorer is composed of the mother ship and the Jupiter orbiter. There is an idea by which the Jupiter probe which descends to the Jupiter is added, too. There is a rotation drum in the mother ship, and it rotates slowly to keep the tension of the sail of 50m in diameter. Inside 1/3 of the sail (JAXA calls it Solar Powered Sail) is a thin-film solar cell, and the ion engine is driven by the electric power. The weight of the explorer is about 600kg because the installing fuel is a little, and it is launched by using a comparatively small rocket.

In this mission, the following observations are planned.

1. Global Observations from the outside of the ecliptic dust by infrared rays
2. The ecliptic dust distribution observation
3. Magnetosphere observation in polar regions in Jupiter
4. Fly-by observation of Trojan asteroid which exists in Lagrange point (L4) of sun-Jupiter system
5. Gamma rays burst-observation

As for the budget, it is expected to suffice for 100 and several billion yen (one hundred million, several ten million dollars). If this plan is approved in the committee in February, it is launched in the summer of 2010 or 2011, and will arrive at the Jupiter in around 2017. However, there is a mission of two competitions ( VSOP-2 radio astronomy satellite and NeXT X-ray astronomy satellite).

http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Cat=&...sb=5&o=0&fpart=

Images and diagrams here:

http://uplink.space.com/attachments//43084..._structure3.jpg

[ljk4-1]

Apparently the Japanese solar sail experiment did not open fully:


Jonathan's Space Report

No. 562 2006 Mar 17, Somerville, MA
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MRO at Mars
-----------

On 2006 Mar 8, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter entered Mars'
gravitational sphere of influence at around 577000 km range. At 2112 UTC
on Mar 10 the MRO's Aerojet-Redmond engines (six MR-107N thrusters
firing at 170N) ignited to begin the Mars Orbit Insertion burn. Light
travel time to Earth was 11 min 58s at the time of the burn; orbit
insertion now confirmed. Planned orbit was 279 x 44500 km x 93.3 deg.
Over the next several months MRO will use aerobraking to lower its orbit
for operational imaging of the surface.

New Horizons
------------

Meanwhile, New Horizons trajectory data is now on the JPL Horizons site.
NH is in a solar escape orbit with a perihelion of 0.98 AU, an ecliptic
inclination of 0.87 deg and an eccentricity of 1.03. After the February
2007 Jupiter encounter it will have a perihelion of 2.2 AU, an
inclination of 2.3 deg and an eccentricity of 1.40. On 2015 Jul 14 the
probe passes Pluto, 1.1AU above the ecliptic plane and 32.9 AU from the
Sun. As seen from Earth, NH and Pluto will be near the star Xi Sgr.

ASTRO-F
-------

Japan launched the ASTRO-F infrared astronomy satellite at 2128 UTC on
Feb 21. ASTRO-F separated from the M-V-8 rocket final stage in a 301 x
718 km x 98.2 deg orbit; it will use an onboard propulsion system to
reach its final orbit and then will eject its optics cover.
The satellite has been named "Akari" (light). By Mar 3 it was in a
707 x 716 km x 98.2 deg orbit; this had been adjusted to
695 x 710 km by Mar 16. Because of attitude control problems,
ejection of the optics cover has been delayed until mid-April.

Akari carries a 0.67m-diameter liquid-helium-cooled infrared telescope
with detectors ranging from the near infrared to 60 and 170 micron
channels in the far IR. It will carry out the first far infrared sky
survey since IRAS in 1983.

The tiny 3 kg CUTE-1.7-APD satellite built by Toyko Institute of
Technology was ejected from the M-V-8 third stage at 2145 UTC. The
other secondary payload, a 15-meter-diameter solar sail (SSP, solar
sail sub payload, soraseiru sabupeiro-do) deployed from the stage at
2146 UTC but opened incompletely.

Arabsat 4A
----------

A Krunichev Proton-M/Briz-M rocket suffered a launch failure on Feb 28.
The Briz-M stage is rumoured to have shut down 27 minutes 31s into a
planned 31-minute second burn, according to several sources.
This was a very long engine burn, but the AMC-15 launch in 2004 saw
a 37.5 minute burn, so it's not a record for Briz-M.

There are now two objects cataloged in a 505 x 14695 km x 51.5 deg
orbit, presumably the Arabsat 4A payload and Briz. Since the failure was
before the end of the second burn, the Briz DTB tank will not have
separated, and the B object is Briz with the DTB still attached.

Arabsat 4A, also known as BADR-ONE (not to be confused with the small
Pakistani Badr-A satellite launched in 1990) is an EADS-Astrium 2000+
satellite with a launch mass of 3341 kg, intended for Middle East
communications by Arabsat, the Arab Satellite Communications
Organization.

Ariane 5
--------

Ariane vehicle 527 was launched on Mar 11 on flight V170 carrying
Eutelsat's HotBird 7A and Hisdesat's Spainsat. The EPC core stage flew
into a -1141 x 158 km x 6.8 deg orbit, and fell back to Earth. The ESC-A
upper stage made a single burn to a 270 x 35748 km x 5.0 deg GTO.

Hot Bird 7A is an Alcatel Spacebus 3000 with an Astrium S400 apogee
engine, and will provide television broadcasting services for the
European operator Eutelsat. Spainsat is a Loral LS-1300 with an
Aerojet-Redmond R-4D engine, and will provide secure X and Ku band
communications for the Spanish defense ministry. HB7A has a dry mass of
1740 kg and a solar panel span of 36.9m. Spainsat has a dry mass of 1467
kg and a solar panel span of 31.4m. By Mar 16 HB7A was in a 34124 x 35761 km
x 0.1 deg near-geostationary orbit drifting over the Atlantic;
Spainsat was still in transfer orbit as of Mar 13.


NASA
-----

The carnage continues in the NASA science program. A few weeks ago, the
NuStar X-ray mission was cancelled, and now the Dawn asteroid mission
has been axed only a year from launch (this decision is apparently under
review). This follows a couple years of delays in selecting new small
missions. These missions had been approved for development and weren't
suffering from major problems (well, in Dawn's case I hear different
stories from different people) - their cancellation seems to be purely
for budgetary reasons. They are being sacrificed to pay for the
Exploration initiative and for other science programs which have run
into trouble. Rare editorial: this is a bad idea; we really need a wide
portfolio of small science missions for the health of NASA's science
program. Having only a few large flagship missions eat the whole budget
is not a smart way to go, however wonderful they are. My impression is
that the current plan gives a larger fraction of the astrophysics budget
to my good (and well-deserving but more professionally flexible) friends
at the large aerospace contractors, and a smaller fraction to pay the
salaries of astrophysicists, who have no other source of funding to turn
to. By the time the budget recovers, our reservoir of world-class
expertise will have left science for other careers.

Let me be clear: the problem is both an external one - other pressures
on the US federal budget, and pressures to fund the human spaceflight
program - and an internal systemic one: the astronomical community's
process for recommending priorities to NASA, which used to work well,
now is widely perceived as disconnected from much of the community and
as effectively broken in the current budgetary context. The process
builds in 'undercosting' at all levels of the system, ensures that
flagship missions are emphasized above all else, and guarantees that the
budget will be hugely overrun. The recent cuts to NASA's astrophysics
program are ill-advised and unfair to the hard-working scientists who
dedicate their lives to these missions. But until we astronomers get our
own house in order again, it's going to be hard to convince Mike Griffin
and Mary Cleave (the NASA boss and head of science, respectively) that
we deserve different treatment.

Errata
-------

I am informed that MTSAT-2 has a US-built Aerojet/Redmond R-4D-11-164
apogee engine, not the IHI 500N engine; also that NEC and Toshiba have
merged into NTspace (NEC Toshiba Space Systems) and they are the prime
contractor for the Daichi satellite. I can also confirm that there have
been no launches from pad 2 at Tanegashima. Thanks to Peter Buist, Olwen
Morgan and Carl Stechman.


Table of Recent Launches
-----------------------

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Feb 3 2302 RadioSkaf - Pirs, LEO Amateur com
05-35C
Feb 15 2335 Echostar 10 Zenit-3SL Odyssey, POR Comms 03A
Feb 18 0627 MTSAT-2 H-2A Tanegashima Com/Imaging 04A
Feb 21 2128 Akari ) M-V Uchinoura IR Astron. 05A
CUTE-1.7-APD ) Tech/Comms 05C
SSP ) Tech 05B
Feb 28 2010 Arabsat 4A Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 06A
Mar 11 2233 Hotbird 7A ) Ariane 5 ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 07A
Spainsat ) Comms 07B

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[ljk4-1]

Launch Date of

Large Deployable Reflector Small-sized Partial Model 2

(LDREX-2)

September 22, 2006 (JST)

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) would like to announce
that, today, we were informed by Arianespace that the launch date of
the launch vehicle that will carry our Large Deployable Reflector
Small-sized Partial Model 2 (LDREX-2) had been set to October 13, 2006
(Japan Standard Time, JST.) The launch was originally scheduled in
mid September but delayed to late September.

Mission website:

Arianespace

http://www.arianespace.com/

Engineering Test Satellite VIII (ETS-VIII)

http://www.jaxa.jp/missions/projects/sat/t...s8/index_e.html

This page URL:

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2006/09/20060922_ldrex-2_e.html

[spdf]

A test in 2004 with a sounding rocket was successfull. There was also a successfull test with a balloon some weeks ago.
There was another try as a sub payload of the Solar-B but Jaxa is still analyzing the data.

But for funding i think Jaxa will give priority to its astronomy missions. (Vsop-2 is already selected and NeXT will be selected during the next round i am sure)

[spdf]

The solar sail test as subpayload to Hinode failed. If i understood it correct the seperation from the rocket could be confirmed. However what happen next no one knows.