14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announce that the nation's new Venus-bound spacecraft has launched successfully on Friday (local time). For the next six months, the weather satellite will be traveling to our neighboring planet, where it will then be injected in its observations orbit. Researchers say that this is the first probe ever designed that can actually be termed an extraterrestrial observations satellite. Its goal is to make more sense of the Venusian atmosphere and surface. Joining it on the same delivery system is a prototype solar sail that will confirm or infirm the potential experts attribute to this new technology, Space reports.
Blast off took place at precisely 2158:22 GMT (Thursday night), which translated into early Friday morning at the Tanegashima Space Center. The spacecraft and the sail prototype were both encapsulated in the same H-2A delivery system that is the workhorse of the Japanese space agency. In order to deliver Akatsuki, the Venus Climate Orbiter, to its desired position around Venus, the launch time had to be selected with very little margin for error, experts say. If all calculations turn out to be correct, then the space probe should reach its destination no later than December 2010, JAXA says.
Initially, the launch sequence was planned to take place on Tuesday (Japanese time). However, that turned out to be impossible due to the fact that foul weather and clouds covered the spaceport. Akatsuki and Ikaros (the solar sail) could, however, be launched today as soon as mission controllers spot a break in the weather. One of the main objectives for the Venus orbiter is to gain more data and provide scientists with a better understanding of the planet's “super-rotation.” This phenomenon makes powerful winds in the atmosphere drive around clouds at speeds of over 360 kilometers per hour, or 220 miles per hour. This means that the atmosphere spins about 60 times faster than Venus itself does.
“Akatsuki is the first 'meteorological satellite' of a planet other than the Earth. Detailed study of Earth's sister planet will provide us with breakthroughs in the field of atmospheric science,” explained recently the JAXA Institute of Space and Astronautical Science director for space science outreach, Seiichi Sakamoto. The probe will be joined by the Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun (Ikaros) prototype. The second spacecraft will embark on a very ambitious mission. It will travel for about three years until it reaches the other side of the Sun, where it will begin tests.