Indeed, same from cosmos4u.

Not hearing good news

--Akatsuki ending press conference. No announcement of the meeting until 22:00 and there are reports point out trouble, and it brought back to confirm. It is going to be a long war.

--Akatsuki is unknown or has failed. Gain antenna was in use until now.

PB, do you have the link to the original Japanese versions of those tweets?

http://twitter.com/koumeishibata

EDIT: Nevermind, Hungry beat me to it

Der. I should've figured that out on my own, huh? Thanks, you guys!

Kay just looked it over, and it's as you said: Q&A with a lot of "we don't knows". Does sound like they're expecting to slowly get some data down over the LGA; the data rate must be pretty slow.

She also says that they lost contact "briefly" before the orbital injection maneuver, but they expect to regain contact "tomorrow"; no time given, but I guess Emily's timeline can probably help to determine that.

From Akatsuki_JAXA

while awaiting for some news, the Japanese Akatsuki site has posted some nice distant images of Earth and Moon taken, if I understand correctly, last 26 October, by the many cameras on the probe.
Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment

Not sure if this adds anything to info already posted but at least it's easy to read: http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&sourc...cZQCqrdmqAOpQnQ

The impression i'm getting from the various tweets and blogs is that they've established some kind of communication with the craft through its low gain antenna. The orbit and inclination seem to be unknowns at the moment, there may be a problem with the crafts rotation ( which should be about an axis going through the thruster and the high gain antenna) that is preventing the high gain antenna from being used. Basically shes alive but they don't yet know where or what shape she's in.
Anyone getting anything radically different?

I hope this is another hayabusa where they pull it back.

koumeiShibata tweet seems to be reporting an interview with project manager Nakamura. Its hard to make out but he seems to be saying that they need to work out where the craft ASAP as tomorrow would be too late to perform a course correction if its needed.

From the above link:

Press conference at 2400 japan time? Thats about 45 minutes if thats what it means. Don't know what the SAC team is or whether them preparing to withdraw is a good or bad sign.

Having quit smoking I can say withdrawal is generaly unpleasant but nescecary! (attempt at humour!)

My wife just looked over the latest tweets, and nothing of note said; mostly admin stuff about a press briefing at midnight (which apparently already occurred, but no summary posted there.) The SAC team (whoever they are) was preparing for a comm pass, apparently; there was some reference to a "download".

Nick, if Kay is available, it would be lovely to get a translation of this press release, which is in PDF format: http://is.gd/ilHmw

Good timing; she was right here! Here it is, with her disclaimer that she's not a space enthusiast so may not have the terminology down pat (any interpolation is mine, and therefore also any errors):

Akatsuki Status

On 7 Dec at 1028 JST the mission team received a signal, but after analysis it was verified that the spacecraft was in safe mode.

The team will determine the spacecraft's position and status as soon as possible and continue tracking.

KYODO NEWS - JAXA unable to confirm space probe Akatsuki has entered Venus orbit

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said Tuesday evening that it has yet to confirm whether the space probe Akatsuki has successfully entered orbit around Venus due to communication problems after it reversed its engine in the final step.
But the Japanese space agency said that Akatsuki has presumably retained its normal posture to secure electricity by automatically switching to a mode of holding its solar battery panel toward the sun.
''We were able to figure out the movements of its radio waves and that is a big step. There is still hope,'' Seiichi Sakamoto, professor of the JAXA's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, said.

So there is still hope.

Emily's got the definitive summary. The spacecraft is safed, communicating slowly due to some limiting circumstances, orbital status still unknown; see her article.

If they're only getting 40s per 10 mins - that would explain the difficulty in getting the tracking data required to figure out the orbit. It takes a while to lock up on a signal and figure out the doppler etc

Apparently, a JAXA news conference is about to begin. I don't know where to follow it.
Edit: Can follow here (Translated); link.

It's Nozomi all over again...

My thoughts exactly, but as long as the orbit crosses (and they have enough fuel), they can in theory try again, right? Hopefully without a nasty solar storm like Nozomi experienced...

Wow much better source
here.

New flight plan.

I wonder what, if anything, they can do with the spacecraft in the intervening time. Search for NEOs? I hope the spacecraft is in good health. I haven't seen any detail yet on what exactly went wrong, if they know anything about that yet.

From cosmos4u's twitter

A strange anecdote:
It was just a couple of days ago when I saw the new issue of Astronomy magazine on a rack in a store, so I flipped through and saw an article (by Jim Oberg I think?) actually mention Akastsuki and how it would be in orbiting Venus (the issue is for the new year), and I thought to myself 'Well they haven't actually gotten into orbit yet, they're a bit ahead of themselves; something could still go wrong'.
And sure enough, it did! :0

Hopefully I didn't jinx them? Even double by mentioning a solar storm?

Thank you all for pointing us to the blogs and news today,
I really feel for the JAXA team and wish them all the best with their contingency plan...

I don't mean to be too critical because space exploration is still rather new and the level of accuracy needed to have a successful mission is almost ridiculous, but this seems to be a continuing pattern with JAXA. They seem to have incredible ideas for missions but I have to wonder if they are being greatly underfunded or if they maybe just need better management/oversight. NASA has had its fair share of screw-ups too (Mars Surveyor '98 anyone?) but they tended to be single events surrounded by other very successful missions. It is entirely amazing that being a very new space agency that they've had so many successfully lifted and operated spacecraft but the previous two interplanetary missions have had serious complications that compromise their intended objectives; Nozomi, being still under the NSDA in 1998 can be lumped in as well. It is greatly disappointing to read of these issues. Heres to hoping they somehow miscalculated the beacon and only suspect that the orbital insertion failed.

I guess lets look forward to some pictures of Venus from Shin'en in the near future.

Shin'en failed the day after launch.
My idea is that the tried to cut some corner on former-ISAS missions (Nozomi, Hayabusa, Lunar-A that eventually did not fly, and now Akatsuki). Maybe it is a question of budget, lack of oversight, or lack of testing... On the other hand, missions managed by the former NASDA have been quite successful. Think of Kaguya

Failures happen in space exploration. It's an ugly truth, and of course there has been tremendous progress over the past 53 years...but they happen, and they always, always will.

Failure modes are often complex, subtle, unexpected, obvious, avoidable, unforeseeable, unimaginable...pick any or all of the above. There are hard limits to pre-launch testing, and nobody and nothing can test all possible cases, or even identify them...we can't know each & every "what-if", nor quite frankly could we test for them all due to the hardest constraints of all--time & money--even if we could know. And sometimes things that in hindsight should have been obvious are simply missed because that is a human characteristic.

It just happens, people.

In that light, I suggest that we be as supportive as we can of the Akatsuki team & JAXA. This is a terribly difficult time for them, both as organizations and as individuals. Whatever disappointment we all feel right now isn't a thousandth of what they feel, and I am certain that each person involved is running through an endless, painful series of what-ifs & coulda/shoulda/wouldas.

We don't need to add to that already terribly heavy burden.

What happens next? Learning. Not the learning about Venus they anticipated to be sure, but learning about spaceships & processes. That's arguably just as valuable in the long run, and perhaps even more so; Venus isn't going anywhere.

But we are.

I'm a little confused here. Did the braking engine fire at all? If they don't have doppler data how can they be planning a second try in 7 years, or is that based on the assumption that there was no deltaV?

P

Assuming the craft is healthy, aside from whatever caused the engine failiure, is there any hope of recycling the craft as in Deep Impact/EPOXI? 7 years is a long time to do nothing even if they think they can get it into Venusian orbit at that time. But even if they don't think they can make a venus orbit it seems a shame to throw a healthy spacecraft away.

I swear I heard the Star Trek theme fanfare when I read that last line, Nick.

Well said.

Not 100 % healthy though, as it did not make orbit.....

My twopence, for what it's worth:

It's not quite Nozomi. Nozomi's engine malfunctioned on the way out of the Earth-moon system.
This is more like what happened during the first encounter between the NEAR spacecraft and
asteroid 433 Eros back in 1998. In this case, unfortunately, the planet's significant gravity
means that they can't just "back it up". Planetary orbit insertions are really make-or-break
(or "brake-or-break?) events.

However, there may still be a significant silver lining in that cloud. As I understand it, the orbit is now
Venus-like, a very good vantage point to observe asteroids, comets and zodiacal dust, the latter already a cruise-phase target.
The array of cameras onboard is suitable for the task (UV, visible, NIR and FIR).
The objects themselves would be hotter than at the Earth's orbital distance from the sun (asteroids)
and, for the same reason, exhibit higher levels of activity (comets). Simultaneous observations
from the Earth and from akatsuki would be useful in determining the three-dmensional structure of
cometary comas and tails. In addition, new objects in intra-Earth orbits, such as Venus Trojans, could be discovered.

There is a lot to do. In fact, and if i may be so bold, I expect the mission team to be considering these very possibilities as we speak.

Tolis.

I wonder, is it possible that usefull observations of Venus could still be made? Long term monitoring of the infra red spectrum of Venus might be usefull in support of Venus Express, even if Venus only appears as a single pixel to the instrument?

I'm actually looking forward to hearing what they may come up with. I really hope there is still a usefull mission to perform. If the team can deliver a scientificaly compelling mission for Akatsuki on its current orbit they may turn tuesday/wedensdays disaster into a 'finest hour' moment.

Given JAXA's success with Hayabusa, I wouldn't be surprised that in the intervening 6-7 years, the engineers reconfigure Akatsuki into a Venus atmosphere probe, sample the Venusian atmosphere, arrange a rendezvous with the solar sail, and use it to return the sample to Earth!

It is an extraordinarily complex business. The ratio of all nations' failed interplanetary probes to the number of successful ones is still quite high, despite 50 years of experience. We have been spoiled by those few probes that have worked and then continued on into extended missions.

Out of genuine curiosity - is there some major difference in the mission management of NASA & ESA, versus the Japanese agency?

Perhaps it is the small sample size, but it seems they haven't been able to a launch any missions the past decade that don't have some serious problem. Do they lack the budget to simulate as many scenarios as NASA/ESA? Don't have as vigorous testing of components? Just plain lack of experience?

At this point, with this history of failures, I have to think that these aren't isolated incidences and they are missing some critical ingredient that NASA & ESA just get right - but I don't have any idea what it could be...

Nor is anyone here going to have an idea what it could be - and speculation of that nature is a best guessing and at worst, just down right unhelpful.

I would encourage all to carefully read http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=167629 - Nick got it just right.

The Americans and Russians didn't give up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, why should Japan give up now?

Keep trying JAXA! Every 'failure' = more experience. That's what counts in this business.

I would be very interested to see the results of a survey regarding support for space exploration by the Japanese public and how it has or has not changed over time. We know these numbers with considerable accuracy in the American public, but I find it very difficult to gauge the feelings of the Japanese on these issues.

Emily has another excellent article covering today's statements by JAXA. It looks like attempting to reach Venus orbit in late 2016 is in fact being considered; 80% fuel remains!

The space business is tough. Not for the faint of heart nor the impatient. Look what JAXA did with Hayabusa.... brought her home with payload.
In the 60's an incident like this would have written off the misson. NOW, we can expect missions to recoup themselves, givern time and patience.

My heart goes out to JAXA. Persevere and learn. You do great work.

Craig

It's very disappointing. JAXA seem to have a very poor rate of success for their interplanetary space missions. Hopefully they'll be able to refocus the mission to salvage what they can.

Their failure rate is quite low. Their last failure in the science programm was in 2000 when the Astro-E astronomy mission got lost during launch. The only failure in the 1990s was Nozomi. Except for these two all the missions were successful to very successful. Some things got lost in translation between English and Japanese, if I remember it correct this was the reason why Astro-EII lost one of its instruments. But still the mission is producing results. Solar-B lost its x-band downlink, so they had to include more ground stations. Reimei, Akari, SELENE, IKAROS, Hayabusa ... did (or are still doing) a great job.

Hayabusa eventually achieved it's goal, and we all admire the skill of the JAXA engineers for bringing the crippled craft home, but let's be realistic. It WAS a crippled craft and the mission was plagued with one crisis after another. The brilliant solutions for adapting and working around these failures brought Hayabusa back from near death more than a few times.

That said, I don't think there is a pattern in any of this and as far as I'm concerned the Japanese Space program is to be applauded.

But since noone tried this stunt before, and noone knew before how the asteroid looked like, I think it might have been inevitable that Hayabusa became crippled.
Here are some of the lessons learned from Hayabusa:
http://sci2.esa.int/Conferences/MarcoPolo-...Hajime_Yano.pdf

I agree with you. But you still can't pretend that it was a smooth, successful mission.

It seems to me Japan is really pushing the technology pretty hard. It's worth pointing out that since Nozomi launched, CONTOUR blew up, MCO cratered, MPL cratered, Beagle cratered, Genesis cratered, Chandrayaan-1 failed, MGS failed... eh, sh*t happens. I do agree Hayabusa had a lot of it.