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

[Tom Tamlyn]

Great picture of the fully deployed sail here (in case there's anyone at umsf.com who doesn't check Emily's blog several times a day.)

Are there any specs on how long the camera is expected to remain within wireless range? And what's the plan for the second camera? I like punkboi's suggestion of "a wide shot of IKAROS in deep space, with Venus in the background."

TTT

[pandaneko]

Great picture of the fully deployed sail here (in case there's anyone at umsf.com who doesn't check Emily's blog several times a day.)

TTT

I am not very surprised about this. About 15,16 years ago I was chatting to a prof at ISAS about the anntena opeinng of Halca space intereferometry satellite and asked him about the possibility. He simply flatly said that he would be extremely surprised if it did open up.

Apparently, he had seen it fully opended up at Mitsubishi's kamakura factory and never believed it will open up in space, but it did...

Second generation is going up in 2012, and what follows is some info on that.

http://www.jaxa.jp/pr/brochure/pdf/04/sat24.pdf

Of course, opening mechanisms must be different, I think. Halca anntena was built of very fine metal mesh, as I remember. Ikaros anntena must have been a lot easier to open up, I think. After all, it is a membrane, not a metal mesh.

Pandaneko