YM COLUMN ARCHIVE
November 12, 2008
Completion of Phoenix mission, Chandrayaan going around the moon and Astronaut Yamazaki
- Completion of Phoenix mission
American Mars Lander Phoenix that landed on Mars on May 25 and discovered water in North Pole soils to have attracted lots of attention has been weakened in its electric power because of large-scale dust storm and has lost contact with ground control center since the last communication with earth on November 2. Under the situation above-said Phoenix mission team declared “give-up” on assumption that the battery of the spacecraft must be completely discharged by now after no contact for full one week and that there will be no prospects of enough sunlight provided because of winter season coming near.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/nov/HQ_08-284_Phoenix_Finishes_Mission.html
Other probes going around Mars will continuously try to attentively catch signals from Phoenix but the mission team supposedly declared completion of the mission. It was certainly a successful mission with great achievements to keep our hope for future “life exploration” on Mars. It’s a kind of funny to say “Immortal Phoenix dies” but we have to give a lot of credit to disappearing Phoenix.
- Chandrayaan going around the moon
Indian lunar explorer Chandrayaan-1 launched from Sriharikota launch site on October 22 has been continuing its journey to moon to reach apogee 386 thousand kilometers on the orbit. On last Saturday the tracking station at Penya, with assistance from Byalalu Deep Space Network (antenna diameter: 18m & 32m), sent radio command to inject main engine for 817 seconds to put it on the actual lunar orbit. The orbit now is perilune 500km and apolune 7,500km and the spacecraft will be finally put on 100km circular orbit. Chairman Madhavan Nair of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) excitedly said, “I thought my heart will be broken down during operation of main engine injection. Now our lunar explorer is going around the moon for the first time in our history! India has become 6th country in the world to have sent satellite to moon!” URL below shows moving image of Chandrayaan’s orbit.
http://isro.org/pressrelease/Nov08_2008.htm
Chairman Nair said, “MIP (Moon Impact Probe) will be released to free fall to the surface around November 15. The objective of this 29kg MIP is the test for future lunar-lander to land on the targeted spot and also to gather various data during the descending. Roughly saying, out of 11 science instruments 5 is made in India, 3 in Europe, 2 in USA and 1 in Bulgaria.
It was decided that Ms. Naoko Yamazaki would board space shuttle Atlantis (ISS assembly mission: STS-131/19A) as the second female astronaut to follow Astronaut Chiaki Mukai. The launch is expected some time after February 11, 2010 and she will stay onboard for two weeks.
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2008/11/20081111_iss_j.html
The objectives of this shuttle mission are to transport multipurpose supply module loaded with such supplies as an experiment rack and equipments for crew; to carry those supplies into ISS (International Space Station) after docking with ISS; and to carry back to earth by the said module the retrieved supplies like ESA payload etc.The role of Astronaut Yamazaki will be robot arm operation and further responsibilities in details will be assigned to her upon considering abilities and experiences of the other crewmembers.
This is really happy news. Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide flied in June this year out of three young astronauts. Only being left is Mr. Satoshi Furukawa but he is appointed to a backup crew of Astronaut Soichi Noguchi, which means that he is a most likely candidate for Soyuz. Astronauts under selection now are those who will carry out various experiments on ISS upon completion of the ISS after May 2010.
I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp
(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)
Copyright (c) 2000 The Planetary Society of Japan. All rights reserved
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