above for ease of reference

page 48

fig. II-1-7 Changes in pressure and acceleration at time of TMI

(here, left vertical axis is pressure and the right handside vertical axis is average acceleration. The horizontal axis is OME firing time (sec))

(on the graph itself, the brown curve is acceleration and inside the square the brown dot is also acceleration)

end of page 48

page 49

fig. II-1-8 Comparison of regulated pressure and propulsion

(here, the bottom line inside the square is predicted propulsion)

end of page 49

page 50

fig. II-1-9 Fuel system pressure trend

(here, inside the square we have):

P2: regulator regulated pressure
P3: fuel tank pressure
P4: oxidiser tank pressure
Pc: 500N thruster burn pressure

end of page 50

page 51

fig. II-1-10 Oxidiser system pressure trend

(captions inside the square are exactly the same as on page 50

end of page 51

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above for ease of reference

page 52

Table II-2-1 Risks considered at time of LV2 selection

(here, I consider this table essentially to consist of 6 columns and 6 rows for ease of translation and that means tacit understanding that some of the table elements have more than one rows or columns)

(top left corner contains a caption): "Options available at time of selection"
(top right corner contains a caption): "Notes"

(top row with column numbers 3,4,5 contanis a caption): "Risks envisaged"

(hereafter I will use regular R and C numbers)

R2C3: mixture of hydrazine and NTO
R2C4: LV2 cannot be opened (valve reliability issue)
R2C5: LV2 open status cannot be monitored

R3C2: Extent of risk influence
R3C3: catastrophic
R3C4: serious
R3C5: local or localised

R4,5C1: LV2 is used
R6C1: LV2 is not used

(against these headers translated as above there are symbolic entries with either triangle, double circle, single circle and I will qualify these symbols after translating the rest of this table. Just to make sure we are using the same esignation there are triangles at R5C5 and R6C3)

R6C6: Valve is not used at all
R5C6: Valve with track records
R4C6: Valve modified to our spec

R4C2: Instruction for open/close is given
R5C2: Instruction for open/close is not given

(symbols are as follows)

◎： unthinkable from the viewpoint of principles
○： small risk (acceptable to the mission)
△： medium risk ( either acceptable to the mission or detailed assessment required)
×： too risky (unacceptable to the mission)

※Result of risk assessment

For the following reasons it was decided that we will carry LV2 and also add LVDT to go with LV2

・Vapour mixture of hydrazine and NTO

When vapour mixture takes place it will mean a very serious risk to the mission. If LV2 is used it means dual safety precaution given the role of CV2 and the risk is deemed small. However, safety precaution with CV2 only is medium in risk taking.


・LV2 cannot be opened

If LV2 is found not to open prior to TMI it will mean a very serious risk to the mission. However, by carrying out a prior checkup of LV2 the possibility of valve unopening can be reduced to a minimum, hence small risk.


・LV2 open/close status cannnot be monitored

Being unable to monitor LV2 status is not that serious and is localised. However, if we consider the burden on operators and human errors due to this burden we thought that having a monitor will reduce the risk to minimum. No monitor, then risk is deemed medimum.

end of page 52

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above for ease of reference

page 53

fig. II-2-1 Schematic of LV2 gas system latching valve

(there are 4 brown squares and these are colis)

(light blue areas are ferrite stainless steel)

(grey area in the middle is Inner piece or Inner member (presumably movable component?, P))

(to the left of above is the plug)

(incoming yellow arrow says: from He tank)

(outgoing arrow says: to oxidiser tank)

(what is seen on the extreme right is the LVDT)

Note: There is a guide with LV2 so that the inner piece is accurately centred.

end of page 53

page 54

table II-2-2 Ground test history of LV2 valve

(this is a table and I consider it to be made of 4 major columns which subdivide)


C1R1: inspection (or test)/pressurised (or loaded?, or even subjected to test?,P) items environment
C1R2: capability confirmation test
C1R3: vibration
C1R4: mechanical shock
C1R5: thermal environment
C1R6: life cycle
C1R7: oxidiser environment 1
C1R8: oxidiser environment 2

C2R1: design quality confirmation test

C21R2 (1st subcolumn of C2R2 is meant): items carried out by valve manufacturer (QT)
C22R2 (2nd subcolumn of C2R2 is meant): items carried out domestically

C2R3C1 (C1 is a subcolumn within C2, counted from left to right): function
C2R3C2: mechanical environment
C2R3C3: thermal
C2R3C4: life (or durability)
C2R3C5: immersion test

C3R1: flight model manufacturing approapriateness confirmation test

C31R2 (1st subcolumn in the main column C3 is meant): AT
C32R2: subsystem (domestic)
C33R2: at system level (domestic)

C3R3C1: items carried out (by valve manufacturer)
C3R3C2: module test or modular test
C3R3C3: subsystem test
C3R3C4: test immediately after incorporation into the system
C3R3C5: thermal test
C3R3C6: mechanical environment
C3R3C7: thermal vacuum
C3R3C8: test immediately upon arrival at launch site

C4R1: Note

C4R4: double circle is a detailed test and a single circle is a simplified test

C4R9: valve on its own (exposed 16 hours to vapour)

C4R10: valve on its own (left in running NTO for 5 hours)

end of page 54

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above for ease of reference

page 55

Table II-2-3 Number of cycles of valve open/close action

(this table, I consider it to be consisting of 6 rows)

(top row headers are from left to right)

category: status: number of cycles, in this order

C1R2: exposure to oxidiser vapour
C1R3: immersion in oxidiser liquid

(status members from top to bottom are):

(1): before exposure
(2): immediately after exposure (0.3 MPa)
(3): 16.5 hours after exposure
(4): vapour pressure reduced to 1 atmosphere
(5): after gas is purged

(6) during immersion in running liquid (differential pressure of 0.35 MPa and 5 hours continuous)
(7): after liquid is purged
(8): after cleaning and drying

end of page 55

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above for ease of reference

Please note that in what follows and in all previous translations I am always translating non alphanumeric entries only.

page 56

Table II-2-4 LV2 action history (action refers to opening and closing of the valve, P)

(before translating elements of this table I will first translate what are seen below the table. They are):

Note: Circle: valve opening/closing by autonomous commands (note 1 (actually, I cannot find this Note a anywhere on this page, P))

Square: valve is opened/closed by a command sent manually in real time

*: valve mulfunctioning during TMI was the 42nd (6th after launch) after delivery by manufacturer and the valve function had been all normal before it

*: automated command function relating to OME firing had been confirmed by ground tests. it was also verified during delta V5 in orbit.

(now, table itself and I consider this table to be consisting of 5 majot columns and 4 major rows with subdivisions)

(first, headers in the leftmost column)

C1R1: Action timing

C1R2: ground tests

C1R3: launch

C1R4: after launch

(next, headers in the top row, from left to right)

C2R1: Number of actions

C2R1 divides into 2 subcolumns and the header entry in the left subcolumn is "close->open" and the header in the right subcolumn is "open->close"

C3R1: Operation status

Here again, this divides into 2 subcolumns. Left subcolumn says "Visibility" and the right subcolumn says "Automation".

C4R1: Judgement

C5R1: Notes

(These are the headers and before translating non alphanumeric entries I will spell out some of the dates entries below. Dates in Japanese are reveresd in order. They are YEAR.MONTH.DAY, in this order, and all in numbers. For example):

97.10.21-22 : 21 to 22 October (10th month), 1997
98.2.27-3.4: 27 February (2nd month) to 4 March (3rd month) 1998
98.12.10: 10 December (12th month) 1998

(now, translations)

C3R4 divides into 5 subrows and entries in the Visibility subcolumn from top to bottom are:

Visible
Visible
Visible
invisible (orange colour highlighted)
visible

Likewise Automation subcolumn entries from top to bottom are:

square
circle
square
circle (orange colour highlighted)
square

Entries in the judgement column (major column) C4 are all "normal" except the 2nd subrow from bottom which is "abnormal" and is orange colour highlighted.

There are 16 entries in succession in C5 from top to bottom minus one. They are:

R2: delivery inspection, domestic

R3: confirmation test after pipe welding

R4: air-tightness test 1, whole propulsion system

R5: air-tightness test 2, whole propulsion system

R6: function confirmation test

R7: overall test, propulsive function

R8: overall test, preperation for environment test

R9: overall test, environment test

R10: overall test, functional air-tightness confirmation test

R11: flight operation, air-tightness test

R12: flight operation, liquid injection and primary pressurising

R13: (launch)

R14: Delta V 1

R15: Delta V 5

R16: Delta V 8

R17: Delta V 9 (TMI) and this is orange colour highlighted.

end of page 56

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above for ease of reference

page 57

Table II-2-5 FTA for LV2 mulfunction

First of all, notations belows this table.

Cross: not possible
Triangle: small possibility
Single circle: medium possibility
Double circle: large possibility

Top row headers go like:

C1R1: suspected reason
C2R1: judgement
C3R1: reason for judgement
C4R1: operational judgement

Since C1 has subcolumns I will have to de descriptive in some cases.

C1R2: mulfunction with the monitoring device

C1 leftmost subcolumn R3 to R10: mulfunction in device area (best I can translate, I am afraid..., P)

C1 righthand subcolumn R3: mulfunction with the inner piece

C1 righthand subcolumn's left subcolumn R4 to R10: mulfunction in valving action

C1 righthand subcolumn's right subcolumn's rows (and there are many and I will hereafter use R numbers only, P)

above's R4: expansion due to incompatible plug materials

above's R5: bad sliding of the plug

above's R6: plug glitching into valve opening area

above's R7: plug misallignment

above's R8: glitching of (or by) foreign material

above's R9: clearance change at sliding setion due to valve temp. change

above's R10: temporary solidification due to crystal formation (such as nitric ammonia)

(hereafter entries become regular, P)

C3R2: monitor is healthy because open/close sensor indicated that the rod for sensor moved in the same direction as the inner piece in response to the open/close command.

C3R3: inner piece movement is considered to be normal because there was a stroke large enough to change the open/close status monitor and also latching had been secured.

C3R4: mulfunction due to expansion is not possible because of the metal jacket at the sealing section and the jacket itself is resistant to NTO.

C3R5: it is thought that because the valve and the plug are independent and are activated by a differential pressure the valve body surface got roughed up by fletching wear and led to corrosion in NTO environment.

C3R6: it is thought that the valve was slightly opened during TMI. However, in this mulfunction mode the slight opening of the valve is difficult to take place.

C3R7: this must be due to bad manufacturing, but the ground tests did not give any indication.

C3R8: this possibility is low because we used a finer filter than the minimum diametrical clearance.

C3R9: the valve had functioned properly in similar environment in flight.

C3R10: propellant was charged (or injected) after dryness confirmation. Also, this phenomenon should have shown up within a few days.

(now the last column, P)

C4R5: we will leave the valve LV2 in open state because we think that slidability will worsen as time goes by.

C4R6: we will leave the valve LV2 in open state because closing it may lead to the same mulfunction with a high possibility.

C4R7: we will leave the valve LV2 in open state because closing it may lead to the same mulfunction.

C4R8: repetition of mulfunction is thought to be low in possibility because it was accidental and also the foreign material must by now have been carried downstream.

C4R10: we will leave LV2 open as closing it may lead to repetition.

(outside the table there are 5 character strings giving the degree of suspicion as the candidate for causing mulfunction. These sit side by side to Rows 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10 and carry a numerical value of 1 to 5 respectively.)

end of page 57

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above for ease of reference

page 58

Table II-2-6 History of LV2 use

(this is a simple table and I just translate the contents in the easiest way as follows. Number of days is just approx.)

Valve remained closed for :

15 days before use as LV2 CLOSE before launch (delta V1) (why delta V at all before launch beats me, P)
42 days before use during delta V1 to delta V5
80 days before use during delta V5 to delta V8
40 days before use during delat V8 to delta V9 (TMI)

end of page 58

page 59

Fig. III-1-1 Nozomi power system schematic

With this schematic I will have to be very descriptive. It all starts from the leftmost square, which is the solar battery.

To the right immediately, and effectively it is a column containing mostly power units, from P1 to P15, say. I hope you can see numbers in this column and I hope they are numerics coded with a single digit. If not you may be looking at a mess.


However, between P2 and P3 there are two more squares. One is "Beacon mode" and the other below it is "Telemetry mode". Actually, there is another square further down between P4 and P5 and that says "Attitude control system and other instruments for observation".

Now, going back to P1 power is sent down to a switch called "Temp. control circuit" which controls the "Main prop. system heater" at the extreme up and right on the schematic.

There is another switch immdeiately below a long horizontal oblong square. This oblong square says "Telemetry Command Interface (TCI)". This second switch is meant to swtich between "Beacon mode" and "Telemetry mode".

There is another square below this switch which says "Transmitter 1" (and I do not find any other transmitters on the schematic, P) and this transmitter is connected to P3 and the switcher above.

Transmitter is also connected to the receiver below it. Both transmitter and receivcer are connected to the antenna on the right (extreme right) and the receiver is receiving power from P4.

The longish square at the bottom says "Data Handling Unit (DTU)" and it has a two way power connection with the telemetry command interface. DTU also connects to the command decoder which sits between the receiver and DHU.

In addition, trhere is another strange square floating below temp. control circuit and the telemetry command interface and it says "Short cicuiting failure" and I do not know why it is sitting there, P.

end of page 59

above for ease of reference

page 60

Table III-1-2 Connections within Common Power Supply Interface (CI-PSU) and devices/instruments related to this power supply

(here again, I will have to be descriptive, but my taks is made a lot easier than the last page in that there is a fairly recognisable regular structure in the table. I am talking about squares seen on the table. And, if you agree with me about the rough structure):

C1R1: X-band transmitter power amplifier (XPA)

C1R2: (pointing to C1R1) X-band transmitter (TMX)

C1R3: various Heaters

C1R4: (pointing to C1R3 with a thick arrow in red) Heat Control Electronics (HCE)

(Here, repetition accepted and C and R reversed or exchanged)

R4C1 (same as C1R47)

R4C2: Open/Close status monitor

R4C3: Pressure monitor

R4C4: Power for ignition

R4C5: Rocketry measurment (INS-SA)

C3R1: Ultra stable transmitter (USA)

C3R2: Data Recorder (DR)

C3R3: Timer

C3R4: S-band transmitter

C3R5: Solar Proton Monitor (SPM)

(In addition, there are two more squares in the middle area and the one above the other is):

Telemetry Command Interface

and blue dotted line connection to;

X-band transmitter
S-band transmitter
and Beacon mode/Telemetry mode switching circuit enclosed within a square formed by dotted lines

(and the other below it is):

Common Interface Power Supply Unit (CI-PSU)

including all of the red line connections emanating from tis square

Note for the title of this page (additional) is:

Red solid lines are related to power and the blue dotted lines relate to signal switching system

end of page 60

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above for ease of reference

There was a mistake on page 60. C3R1 should have been Ultra Stable Oscillater and with an abbreviation USO

page 61


Table III-1-1 CI-PSU and a list of devices connected to it

(this is a regular table with C3R12 structure. Top row from left to right is Abbreviation::Full Name::Function etc)


CI-PSU: Common Instrument Power Supply Unit: To supply power to the following 10 devices with secondary voltage of +29V, +12V, -12V, +5V

TCI:: Telemetry Command Interface :: To act as a telemetry command interface to a number of common devices

HCE:: Heater Control Electronics:: Heater ＯＮ／ＯＦＦ control and temp. measurement (Heater power is supplied directly from the bus voltage)

DR:: Data Recorder:: To keep data to be sent out to the telemetry system

SPM:: Solar Proton Monitor:: To measure solar protons (usually from 1MeV to a few tens of MeV)


IG-PS:: IGniter Power Supply:: Condensor bank type power supply to provide power to pyros

INS-SA:: INStrument-SAtellite:: Sensor only used at launch, turned OFF thereafter

EPT-SA:: Electrical Programmable Time-Satellite:: Timer circuit, only used at launch and turned OFF thereafter

P-Mon:: Pressure Monitor:: Pressure monitor for propulsive system (imported item)

LVDT:: Linear Variable Differential Transformer:: Latching valve monitor for the propulsive system (imported item)

USO:: Ultra Stable Oscillator:: For radio science measurement (imported item)

end of page 61

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above for ease of reference

page 62

fig. III-1-3 Orbital position of Nozomi on the Sun-Earth fixed system

Here, at the centre is the Sun and just to its right is where we are. The only remaining character set on this figure in 2 O'clock position says "Nozomi orbit as seen from the Earth".

End of page 62

page 63

fig. III-1-4 Operational sequence during 24 to 25 April

Note: Netted area corresponds to operational time with Usuda station in Japan. (some 10km from my mountan cottage in central Japan highland!)

(I view this time line to be consisting of 2 columns, one black and the other in red)

(Looking at the black column from top to bottom, still following the times on themain time line):

22:15 MTX_RNG_B (TLM modulation OFF)

02:00 Observation mode change

03:00 Ditto

03:25 Ditto

07:35 TLM editing mode change

07:43 Earth persuit ENA (some kind of enabling activity?, P)

09:00 Earth persuit judgement permitted

10:10 Earth persuit DIS

10:20 TLM editimg mode change

17:37 Time specification CM: TMX_TLM_MOD_ON (TLM modulation)

17:57 Time specification CM: TLM editing mode change

18:32 TMX_TLM_MOD_ON (TLM modulation ON)

18:52 DR REC->STBY

(What follows from here is the column in red, sometimes corresponding to entries in black on the left and there are 5 entries)

1. from 22:15 UDSC LOS to 07:00 is the period in which the failure (or accident) is thought to have taken place.

2. at about 09:00 No action taken* estimated from the reception level on the ground

3. at around 17:00 No action taken

4. at around 18:00 Recption despite TLM modulation being OFF

5. (against 18:32 black entry) No action taken

end of page 63

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Page 64

Fig. III-1-5 Signal reception strength changes from Nozomi received at Usuda (Japan) station's (60m dish)

Unlike normal recption which shows a tendency that strength is max. in the middle and amplitude is min. in the middle we find on 25 April, instead, that strength is decreasing to the right and amplitude is monotonously increaseing.

This corresponds to the situation in which automatic (or autonomous) Earth searching is not being activated (or obeyed).

Characters on the graph is red says "at normal times".

end of page 64

page 65

Fig. III-1-6 Temporal changes recorded by the Solar Proton Detector

Character string in red on the graph says "Time of accident (estimate)".

end of page 65

page 66

Fig. III-1-7 Strength changes since (or after ) year 2000 in the number (?) of high energy particles suffered by Nozomi

Graph above : Average number of counts per every spin (about 8 seconds) of the satellite in a day.

Character string in red says "020421 (data saturated)".

Graph below: Cumulative flux (cmXX2/str) since (or after) year 2000.

end of page 66

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above for ease of reference

page 67

Fig. III-1-8 1 bit comms. (communication using autonomous function)

We could regard this to be a table, but for intuitive simplicity I will be descriptive as follows:

top 3 squares from left to right are:

1. setting a question by a command.

2. judgement by autonomous function.

3. Beacon ON command.

Long horizontal line is "Beacon ON" and the short dotted line just below it says "Corresponds to "Beacon OFF" and the character string below says "YES" and the dotted line is "judgement".

end of page 67

page 68

Table III-1-2 Predicted and actually measured values of data on 2 May and 1 bit comms. (operation by ON/OFF beacon signals)

(here, I regard this to be a C5 and R21 matrix and what follows refers only to the tabular entries)

C2R1: Data on 24 April

C3R1: Estimated value on 2 May

C4R1: Actually measued value

C5R2 to R16 is common and it says"Normal except the heater and the common power source".

C5R17: Measued value on 3 May.

C5R18 to R21: cooled to temp. below freezing temp..

end of page 68

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page 69

Fig. III-2-1 FTA relating to the cause candidates for "not being able to switch to telemetry mode"

(Here, I want to do a few things (experiments) to make sure that what I have been doing is not a waste in the sense of translation quality (?).)

(Here, if I am right, you should be looking at a table (please refer to the original PDF), not a proper table in the sense of it being square in shape, but still retaining its remote hope for being one. My only regret is that I have given R1 to the top header line's row number as you will see in my translation. Actual table elemtns (apart from header line) could have been named from R1 ( In my notation of what folows R1 is denoted as R2, I am afraind), instead of R2 against each column number) (I will also experiment with lines used for squaring off areas used for character strings)

C1R1: Tree top event

C2R1: Primary cause

C3R1: Secondary cause

C4R1: Tertiary cause

C5R1: Judgement reasons

(After this you must be seeing a thick horizontal line separating the header entries above it and the table contents which follows below the horizontal demarcation line)

C1R2: No reception desipite the satellite being in TLM ON mode

C2R2: X 100: Data processing unit mulfunction (X means negative, I think)

(This "X 100: Data processing unit mulfunction" is based on my onw notation and I will seek your comments on the reproduction quality of this particular entry (C2R2) as a member of the larger table. For instance, ":" is simply a short vetical line for seperation between 100 and what follows. For that matter, there is another vertical line in the original text between X and what follows it. Can you see all these features with your 8 bits OS codnig system)

(OMG!, I have lost what I had in mind for further explanation..., but let me continue anyway)

C2R3: X 200: TMX mulfunction

C2R4: X 300: TCI mulfunction

(row numerbs are effective numbers only, not corresponding to the finest row numbers on the extreme right column)

C3R2: (there is a horizontal connection from 100) X 110: Command autonmation sequence mulfunction

C3R3: X 120: Data bus mulfunction

C3R4: X 210: Command recption circuit mulfunction

(horizontal line connection from 200)

C3R5: X 220: Reley device mulfunction

C3R6: X 310: TCI itslef only going bad

C3R7: X 320: Power cut-off

(now we move on to the next column, which is long)

C4R2: X 111: autonomous (or automatic) sequence DISABLE

C4R3: X 112: Devices shrank back to IPL mode

C4R4: X 211: Device internaland +5V system mulfunction

C4R5: X 212 Responsible componetnts mulfunction

C4R6: X 221: Device internal and +V12 sytem mulfunction

C4R7: X 222: Responsible components mulfunction

C4R8: X 311: Responsible components mulfunction

(Herre after column 5 entries, only row numbers)

C5R2: We sent the same sequence of commands as REAL, but we could not confirmt its outome.

C5R3: after starting up the devices once again, we sent the same related sequence command, but we could not confirm its outcome.

C5R4: We were able to confirm that regular outcome of the command XPA ON and OFF and there was no reason why some other commands copuld not be accepted and executed acccordingly.

C5R6: Ditto

C5R7: Ditto

C5R8: Same as R5

C5R9: Same as R6

C5R10: Power source (CI-PSU) for TCI is the same and is commonly used for the heater control system. Therefore, it is accepted that the POWER OFF led to freezing of propulsive materials and further leading to inability of keeping the Earth in view.

Also, POWER OFF can explain all othe events.

C5R11: Analyses later showed that the time ellapse between POWER OFF and actual freezing was 2 hours at maximum, but this itself does not negate any of the operational sequence.

end of page 69

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above for ease of refernce

page 70

Fig. III-2-2 FTA relating to cause candidates for "CI-PSU not being put into ON as required" (part 1 of 2)

(In what follows you will see the sort of difficulties I am having with this particular figure and with others on several fronts. Unlike all other figures so far this figure turned out to be a picture. I was very pleased with this finding and copied it and tried to paste it into this page for ease of translation for myself. It did not work. It perhaps is this forum's policy not to allow simple picture pasting?

So, I ended up handwriting everything within this figure for retyping in here. I do know that I can open up more than one internet pages for work on my display unit, but in reality I will find it difficult to cope with. Anyway, back to this picture figure in question. Because it is a picture, obviously photo-reduced from a much larger original figure which was converted into a picture,
characters on it are very corrupt. You may say enlarge them, but if you do the same corruptnes is enlarged. So, my translation will be sometimes bad, to say the least.)

(Here it goes, and without using row numbers, and the top header line first)

C1: Tree top event
C2: Primary reason
C3: Secondary reason
C4: Tetiary reason
C5: 4th reason
C6: Reason for judgment

(Now, I am coming on to the main figure entries and start using row numbers in line with the number of rows in C6, which will act as reference row numbers without disruption or vacancy between entries in this C6 column. Unlike previous page, R1 here refers to the very 1st row entry, ignoring the header line above them.)

C1R1: Circle: CI-PSU cannot be put into ON state.

(This leads on to 4 tree elements (or squares in the picture if you can recognise it as such), or branches in C2 as follows. Also, a vertical line pointing down from the intersection between C1R1 and C2R1 ppoints to the next figure to follow on page 71.)

C2R1: Cross: 100: PSU limitter?, or resetter?, or reactor? bad action (or failure, or failing). (Here, ? means "uncertain in my recognition of the characters to be read")

(You may actually find more reasons for them to be something more meaningful as my translation continues)

C2R7: Cross: 200: PCU-CU-PSU + (plus) somehing I cannot recognise at all

C2R8: Triangle: 300: CI-PSU bad action (or failure)

C2R12: Cross: 400: CI-PSU device + something I cannot recognise

C3R1: Cross: 110: PCU whole function mulfunctioning

C3R2: Cross: 120: Commanding function mulfunctioning

C3R4: Cross: 130: Limitter? function not functioning

C3R8: Cross: 310: Voltage control not functioning

C3R10: Triangle: 320: Secondary system not functioning

(Actually, just thinking about the picture property of this figure, I am beginning to suspsect that most of the 1.09 Meg of this report might be coming from these pictures. Perhaps not, because these are one layered B/W pictures...)

C4R2: Cross: 121: Logic circuit for commanding failure

C4R3: Cross: 122: "something" ON command output failure

C4R4: Cross: 131: detection register (or resistance) "something" failure

C4R6: Cross: 132: OP amp. gain increase

C4R7: Cross: 133: Comparator failure

C4R9: Cross: 311: Switching TR failure

C4R10: Cross: 312: PAM control failure (I may be wrong here)

C4R11: Triangle: 321: One or more components failure

C5R11: Triangle: 321A: Accidental failure

C5R12: Cross: 321B: Bad soldering of components (Here, if you find a smiley after 321, it is a capital byee)

C6R1: Apart from the yet-to-be done "batch something" after the accident there is no mulfunction outside CI-PSU On/Off function

C6R2: Other commands by the common F?PCA (On/Off in other systems) are functioning properly and it is hard to imagine that only an arbitary function is affected.

C6R3: Ditto

C6R4: In the line in question there is a built-in function whereby FMT, or TMT, or FET switch is turned off in the event that a limit is exceeded on comparison of detected current value and the limit value (or reset value)

If the detection register or resistance fails on "release (infinite impedance as I suspect)" then secondary output is terminated in theory. However, in this case in hand there was an imperfect secondary output reported.

C6R5: This will only occur if the input register (or resistance) fails, or on "something register" "release (infinite impedance?)" fails

However, register failure in a very minute current circuit is unthinkable.

C6R6: 4 system functions are all integrated into the same comperator layout and it is very hard to imagine that only a particular function failed.

C6R7: This is "something" inside the satellite and it is very hard to imagine that it failed accidentally after 4 years in service in deep space.

C6R8: This can be denied in view of the secondary output.

C6R9: Here, do not forget that we are talking about 17 ceramic condensors.

C6R10: Failure mode of the soldered parts after years of service in space use is not "something", but "relaese (and I suspect this to mean infinite impedance)

C6R11: Same as C6R7 and it may be that the said "something" may be WHN... I do not know what WHN may mean, though.

end of page 70

P

thanks panda, I look forward to your translations every day!
by the way, is there anybody who wants to collect them in a proper document? I would do it myself, but I'm too lazy...

Thanks, Paolo. If that somebody is watching these posts regularly you may eventually come into contact with him (or her) and in fact you may jointly pose further questions to me for action.

I might also add at this stage, that I will be wanting to explain, in the season's spirit, why I am bothered at all by this issue of 8 bits or 16 bits coding. I just hope that Admin will allow me to spend some time (space, and not a lot at all) on it as an exceptional posting. It is after all Merry Christmas, is it not? P

I was thinking that a way to make good use of pandaneko's translations might be to set up a multi-author blog and have volunteers match original slides to his translations as blog posts. This is something we'd be able to set up on the Society website after our upcoming redesign, but I'm pretty sure we could also just ingest an existing wordpress blog if someone wanted to get started on the project before.

above for ease of reference

page 71

(This page is even worse than page 70 in that the extent of photo-reduction is much larger as the number of rows in the last column is now 19, compared with 11 on page 70, making almost all of entries impossible to decipher, but I will do my best.

In the meantime, I forgot to mention something with page 69. There is an arrow pointing upward from C5R11 to C5R10.)

Fig. III-2-2 FTA relating to cause candidates for "CI-PSU not being put into ON as required" (part 2 of 2)

(This figure is effectively a 6C and 19 R matrix. Header entries from C2 to C6 are the same as on page 70. C1 header is continuation, I think and there is no entry in C1 column at all.)

C2R1: Circle: 500: CI-PSU XXX (here, XXX means impossible to recognise characters in this space)

(and entries in C3 all come from C2R1 and they are):

C3R1: Cross: 510: ?PS XXX (here, ? means there is something in this space which cannot be recognised)

C3R2: Cross: 520: S (or 5)PM?, XXX

C3R3: Cross: 530: EPT-SA XXX

C3R4: Triangle: 540: WS (or 5)-SA XXX

C3R6: Cross: 550: DR XXX

C3R7: Triangle: 560: TC XXX

C3R12: Triangle: 570: HCE XXX

C3R17: ***: 580: LVDT XXX Here, *** is a character string, not a circle nor triangle. I strained my eyes and I still could not recognise what it is)

C3R18: ***: 590: USO XXX

C3R19: ***: XXX: pressure sensor XXX

C4R1: Cross: 511: XXX ( and this XXX will be the same in all rows of this column)

C4R2: Cross: 521: XXX

C4R3: Cross: 531: XXX

C4R4: Cross: 541: XXX (and this and the next entry comes from Triangle: 540 in C3)

C4R5: Triangle: 542: single event upset

C4R6: Cross: 551: XXX

C4R7: Triangle: 561: XXX

C4R12: Triangle: 571: XXX

C4R17: ***:581: XXX

C4R18: ***: 591: XXX

C4R19: ***: 5A1?: XXX

C5R7: Triangle: 561A: total dose effect

C5R8: Triangle: 561B: single event latch up

C5R9: Triangle: 561C: latch up by discharge

C5R10: Triangle: 561D: accidental

C5R11: Cross: 561E: bad soldering job

C5R12: Triangle: 571A: total dose effect

C5R13: Triangle: 571B: single event latch up

C5R14: Triangle: 571C: latch up by discharge

C5R15: Triangle: 571D: accidental

C5R16: Cross: 571E: bad soldering job

(and the last column entries are all too bad. There are entries in R1 to R9, R11 to R14, and R16 to R19. It is possible to read a few characters in any of these entries, but this column, giving reasons, contains much larger number of character strings and it is no use to be able to read here and there and translation will be bound to be wrong)

end of page 71

This is perhaps a good time for me to mention the coding issue which has been tormenting me, a particularly acute problem if I am facing a table. I will try to be as succinct as possible.

My ancesters did not have characters and burrowed them from China (Thank you! China) Making the story brutally simplistic, Chinese characters are all pictures (hieroglyphic), made up with a lot of strokes. So, the usual 8 bit coding system cannot cope with the complexity. We therefore need 16 bits and I have no idea why they do it, but they here use the 16 bit system for coding (simpler) alphanumerics as well.

Result is confusing. 16 bit alphabets are OK as they are of the same shape, but simply "fatter" in appearance, but numbers look deceptively similar. My problem is tables. Are the numbers in the table 8 bit coded or 16 bit coded? For that matter, are the line elements, forming the frame of tables, are they what they look like, or not?

My assumption so far is that people who made these tables used 8 bit coding for alphanumeric entries. The only way to check is to copy a table (not a picture table, but text table) for experiment. I meant to do that yesterday, but faced with the picture table not wanting to be pasted here I did not managed to do it. I will try again when all of the translation work comes to an end.

Now, what follows is an extra for your Christmas conversations.

So, characters came from China and you want to write, say, "I eat an apple".

What my ancesters did was to put "I- like picture, Eat- like picture, Apple- like picture". They, however, made a fatal mistake in all this because "XXX-like pictures" were all chosen for their sounds, not understanding each is a picture. Chinese naturally pointed out that above sequence actually reads "You drive a cow". Here, of course, this is only by way of explanation.

So, my ancesters eventually allocated the right pictures in the right places. But, they did not like it at all. Too many strokes! So, they decomposed Chinese characters into components and came up with 2 phonetic sets of characters. Had they stayed with these two sets only my current problem should not be existing.

In reality they decided to retain a portion of these Chinese pictures as well. So, our current writing system is a mixture of phonetic and hieroglyphic characters. This is why 16 bit coding system is used here and how my dilemma started.

Merry Christmas from Pandaneko to all of my colleagues and all those space probes out there in deep space!

above for ease of reference

page 72

Fig. III-2-3 Bus system voltage and current at the time of flares

(The only caption here is indicated by red lines and it says):

No change is seen in the portions indicated (by lines in red)

end of page 72

page 73

Table III-2-1 Accidental failure probability in space use by component types (quality assured level at class S)

(This is a C4 R many matrix. The only captions to be translated are):

C3R1: How many years before accident? or Accident every how many years?

C4R1: Occurrence rate of short cicuiting mode (for information only)

Note: FIT is the number of failures in 10 to the power of 9 years

end of page 72

Page 73

Table IV-2-1 Measures to be taken for the cause candidates which this time have been rated low (With Nozomi measures have been taken)

(This is an easy C2R6 matrix.)

C1R1: Cause candidates
C2R1: Measures to be taken

C1R2: total dose
C2R2: choose components which are most approapriate for the environment in use

*: initial sign of total dose is a small increase in current and this itself will not easily lead to "lost functions". We must therefore ensure that current limitters will not react prematurely.

C1R3: single event upset (SEU)
C2R3:

1. regular patroling and provision of refreshening function
2. triple redundancy for important registers
3. robust control logic (eg. automatic discovery of imvalid data)

C1R4: latch up
C2R4: choose radiation hardened components

C1R5: charging up
C2R5: Get rid of conductive layers which are not earthed

C1R6: high voltage discharge
C2R6:

1. isolation of vulnerable systems (eg. surrounding by secondary ground, primary and secondary isolation)
2. installation of imprinted voltage variables

end of page 73

P

That's a great story about the 16-bit coding
Thanks again for all the translation work this year.
A very Merry Christmas to you and your family.

above for ease of reference

page 75

Table IV-2-2 Means for seperating out failure causes and their characteristics

(This is a C3R6 regular matrix inluding the headers in row 1)

C1R1: Failure cause seperation means
C2R1: Meritts
C3R1: Demeritts

C1R2: Resistances
C1R3: Fuses
C1R4: Relays and limtter circuits
C1R5: FET switches and limitter circuits
C1R6: Ideal redundancies

C2R2: system is easy and repetitive activations are possible.

C2R3: Setting up is easy.

C2R4: Repetitive activations are possible.

also, cancelling of latching up is possible.

There is a possibility to save components from temporary shortciruiting.

C2R5: Repetitive activation is possible.

There is no limit to the number of activation.

also, cancelling of latching up is possible. There is a possibility to save components from temporary shortciruiting.

It is very easy to set the system to OFF side without fail at the time of power on.

C2R6: It is possible to accept, at least once and perfectly as well, every possible failure mode.

C3R2: Need heat resistance at times of short circuiting.

Given voltage drop we may find it difficutlt to use this as "load current" may fluctuate.

C3R3: Once activated it will remain in the same state forever.

We need to check anti-vivration characteristics at launch times.

Action possible region is generally fairly narrow in that it will function without being affected by a sudden surge etc, with a current which will not affect other devices.

C3R4: Composition is very complex.

Relaying system itself needs watching out for failures and there is a limitation on the number of possible actions that can be taken.

If the relay system is of a "latch type" it may not improve the situation if:

1. there is another breaker downstream and
2. response speed upstream is slow

C3R5: Composition is very complex.

We need to allow for:

1. some extent of voltage drop
2. some extent of heat generation

C3R6: Impact on heavy resources is largest (I have no idea what they are talking about, P)

If we want to introduce cross-redundancies it will lead to the system getting very complicated and we will have to be extremely careful in design and verification.

We will need to evaluate its usefulness against the failure rate of similar redundant systems if:

1. the vulnerability against failure is very localised and/or

2. if the failure rate in question is very low in the first place.

end of page 75

P

above for ease of reference

page 76

Table IV-2-3 Concrete examples of failure seperation methods

(Inside the top horizontally oblong square says):

Large characters and those enclosed inside ovals are the points of improvements made with Nozomi

(However, I do not find any large characters on this page and next. There are, however, characters shown in red toegther with lines in red as you will see)

(There are two system outlines on this and next page, one on left and the other on right)

(One on left here says): Nozomi's system outline : current

(the only other characters for translation here is inside the top of 3 boxes next to TCI and it says): "Pressure monitor".

(the other one on right here says): Nozomi's system outline with improvement plan (1): Protective resisters in case of Black Box failure.

(the only other characters for translation here is inside the top of 3 boxes next to TCI and it says): "Pressure monitor".

end of page 76

Page 77 (system outline continuued)

(One on left here says): Nozomi's system outline with improvement plan (2): Protective resisters in addtion to switching between CI and PSU ( as indicated by vertically long square in red) + 1 kg in weight ( and the characters in this square says):

"Power control motherboard (within TCI)"

(the only other characters for translation here is inside the top of 3 boxes next to TCI and it says): "Pressure monitor".

(the other one on right here says): Nozomi's system outline with improvement plan (3): Protective resisters in addition to individual power source for every device (+ 3 kg in weight)

(characters in the square above LVDT next to TCI-2 box in red says): "Pressure monitor".

end of page 77

P

I now realise that I have effectively come to the end of translation work for this particular document. There are some more pages including pages 79 to 81 which are glossary pages in English and Japanese and very useful for any future correction work.

However, just glancing at these pages I note with satisfaction that I have not made fatal mistakes in the choice of my wordings.

Other pages are irrelevant to the story of this failure and need not be translated.

For now I may take up to 10 days of break in view of the inevitable events coming up over the next 2 weeks or so. However, it does not mean that I will not be able to grab time to do what remains to be done even during this period. It is just inpredictable.

When I resume the first document will be the JAXA press release summing up the causes of failure.

P

What follows is the press release. I will provide link info and any other info later. Also, I am not exactly sure if this will be useful and I may not be able to complete translation of the whole of this release this evening and in which case I will continue tommorrow on with the rest. Here, we go as follows.

About abandoning insertion of Nozomi into Mars circular orbit

10 December 2003, JAXA

We reported on above subject to Space Activities Comission (SAC) held today as follows.

1. Current status

1. Mars probe Nozomi (launched July 1999) (fig. 1) developped a mulfunction in the fuel supply system at the time of leaving the earth gravitational fields (20 December 1999) (mulfunction history shown in seperate paper 1) and we had to change the original orbital plan and the arrival had to be changed from October 2000 to December 2003.


• 1st Japanese Mars probe launched by ISAS, carrying instruments from Sweden, Germany, US and Canada, also in cooperation with France.

• Launched by M-V 3 solid fuel rocket on 4 July 1998 from Uchinoura Space Observation Centre of ISAS in Kagoshima prfecture.


• Main objectives: Interaction between Solar winds and upper utmosphere of Mars

(Martian magnetosphere, atmosphere, plasma composition, satellites)

• Nozomi has been in its final approach into Mars since June of this year. EAT is 14 December.


Fig. 1 Outline of Mars probe Nozomi (Planet


2. A mulfunction developped in April 2002 in the comms. and thermal protection systems, resulting in minimum amount of communication in addition to incapability to perform temperature control. The mulfucntion here refers to thoes events as shown in Fig. 2 whereby part of the series of the circuits meant to supply power from common sources of power to components developped short circuiting.


Fig. 2 Nozomi power supply, schematic outline

3. May 2002 we tried to stablise probe temp. by turning on instruments. Also, we made a restoration work by trying to burn out the short circuiting sections by directing currents. However, this operation resulted in total loss of communiction capability.

4. July 2002 we kept trying to recover comms. for two months based on the findings of trouble shootings and achieved a minimum level of communication capability.

5. August 2002 fuel temp. reached that of fuel defreezing temp. This was due to the decreasing distance between the probe and the Sun and also the heat generated by the instruments on board. From here on we managed to control fuel temp. by keeping the right probe orientation.

6. June 2003 we managed to insert Nozomi, using the bare minimum communication means, into its final transer orbit.

7. July 2003 we needed precise orbital determination and firing of the main engine. This meant that we had to restore thermal contorl system and the work began as required. Unfortunately, this work yet again led to the total loss of comms.

8. From July 2003 to today (December) we have been trying to burn out the short circuiting sections by directing currents to there, and this meant that the number of times we turned on the common power source reached 1.3 times 10,000,000,000.

We also tried to rewrite the ROMs on board in order to exclude the possibility of the onboard computers going bad to no effects. Based on this we returned the ROMs to their initial values and continued with "continous ON" operation, but there is no prospect of recovery on the night of 9 December.


9. All this made us persuade that insertion into Mars orbit was no longer possible and we began the process of work required to make sure Nozomi will avoid collision into Mars on the night of 9 December in accordance with an international agreenment (collision probability is less than 0. 1% as required)

For your reference current orbital plan with insertion in mind is shown in Fig. 3 and that of fly-by is shown in Fig. 4. As you can see from Fig. 3 continuing with the current orbital plan with a fly-by will mean just a slight acceleration by Mars gravity and lead to a clser approach to Mars.


NOTE) COSPAR planetatry protection policy and moral obligation to observe its policy



Fig. 3 Nozoni's original orbit

Fig. 4 Nozomi's Mars orbiting plan and its fly-by orbit


(This will continue, not by very much, though)

P

What follows is the translation of the "seperate paper 1" mentioned in the last entry. I am afraid I cannot paste the URL yet of this report as I do not wish to loose what has been copied for this entry. I will do that tommorrow.

Seperate paper 1

About giving up the hope of inserting Nozomi into Mars circular orbit



History of Nozomi's mulfunctions. Mulfunction of this time

20 December 1998

Escape from Earth gravity to the mulfunction in which not enough propuslive power was achieved


Causes:

Too much fuel had to be used because the valve upstream of the oxidiser tank had not been fully opened (note 1), leading to much less propulsion than expected. The valve in question was what had been specifically employed in order not to allow reverse flow of the fuel and oxidiser vapours upstream as precaution given the US Mars Observer's trouble.


Measures taken:

It was discovered that it was not going to be neccessary to close the above valve in order to stop the reverse flow given the amount of remaining fuel after Earth escape operation. It was therefore decided that we will open the above valve during the visible operational period on 21st and keep it opened during the rest of our operation.

Influences:

We had to give up our originally planned Mars insertion operation due to take place in mid October 1999 and had to delay it until sometime between end December 2003 to early January 2004. (Subsequent orbit optimisation led to the time of arrival to be 14 December 2003.)


26 April 2002: Signal came in as a beacon signal (*1) (trouble at this time)


Causes:

Short circuiting had developped in parts of the secondary circuit of the common system power source (CI-PSU) and it is estimated that this was due to the high energy particles in the wake of the massive solar flares on 22nd (maximum as far as Nozomi was concerned).

Influences:

We were no longer able to send data from Nozomi to the ground because there was no power. In addition, the thermal control circuit was not active. (It was later discovered at the end of April that the fuel had been frozen at the time of 26th.)

Measures taken:

3 May 2002:

We turned on instruments one by one so that satellite temp. could be improved. Thermal analysis told us that the left-alone- attitude operation will lead to natural defreezing in September.

15 May 2002:

We lost beacon wave reception due to continuous sending of "ON commands" to the sections concerned.


• It is thought that the X-band transmitter's relay circuit caused a mulfunction (to OFF) due to the imperfect start-up of the power source for the ICs meant for command distribution. (Both ON and OFF commands were issued at the same time)

• Ground tests showed that different relays will behave differently and this presented the possibility of recovering the beacon communication by issuing a one-off command meant specifically for the power source in question.

Measures taken (before report acceptance?):

15 July 2002:

After some 7500 trials beacon communication was back.

End August 2002:

Fuel defreezing temp. reached -> after this we kept attitude control for this state so that fuel freezing will not occur again.

20 December 2002:

1st Earth swing-by

19 June 2003:

2nd Earth swing-by

Since 5 July 2003:

Short circuit section's burn out operation by keeping CI-PSU permanently ON. During this process total loss of beacon communication on 9 July.

From 2 October 2003 to around 20 October 2003:

Rewriting of the contents of the memory on board in order to exclude the possibility of the mulfunction of the DHU on board (*2)


From 23 October 2003:

Re-starting the operation for burning out the short-circuiting sections by continuosly issuing commands by CI-PSU.


NOTE 1:

Looking into the causes of the valve mulfunction we now know that it is almost certainly due to the increased resistance to the sliding motion at the sliding section due to incompatibility of materials used at that section.


*1

Beacon state: Signals are sent out by the satellite, but no data is carried on these waves.


*2

DHU： the most important computer on board, for evrything.


End of this press release

P

What follows is the URL of the press release of JAXA on Nozomi's failure.

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2003/12/20031210_nozomi_j.html

About this coding business I have been thinking about it for the last three weeks. Simplest would be to experiment. Here, I will switch on my hardware switch to write "1 A" using 16 bits coding. What goes before that is "1 A" with 8 bits coding.

1. 1 A with 8 bits coding: 1 A

2. 1 A with 16 bits coding: １　Ａ

With 2. above, I actually added one space with 16 bits coding and that may complicate this issue, but not by much, I hope...

If you can read them both without any problems, then I can forget about my worries about this, except that there might still be cases where the person(s) who wrote the whole thing may have used the mixture of 8 and 16 bits codings without consistency.

This is not a small matter of concern. On placing mail orders, for example, your order may be rejected. It does happen, here, often...

Pandanakeo

What follows is the URL of the ISAS pages I am about to ranslate for some time to come.

http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/j/enterp/missions/...status_01.shtml

Its rough title is something like "what Nozomi may have left for the success of future international planetary missions".

This is entirely in accordance with the purpose of my translating relevant files for the advancment of future missions and I am very pleased that I found this particular file for the communities with interest.

Translations will follow shortly. The original file consists of 4 contributions made by the same person and each may take up to a few times of translation. I will not be identifying the name of the person who wrote these pages.

P

In what follows I am translating this document chunk by chunk as I see fit for the purpose because there are no page numbers as such.

Nozomi left the Earth on 4 July 1998 and travelled across the solar system for over 5 years carrying signatures of hope from more than 270,000 people. I regret to say that we had to teminate the operation of Nozomi at 20:30 on 9 December 2003 (Tuesday) despite the frantic efforts by the team upon confirmation that we had not been able to fix the faulty portions of the system.

Consequently, we kept sending out a command to Nozomi from 20:45 until 21:23 on the same day in order to reduce the possibility of Nozomi colliding with Mars. As a result, Nozomi passed, on 14 December, the height of about 1000 km from the surface of Mars and left the gravitational field of Mars to continue its journey across the solar system once again.

Nozomi, the first of its kind ever launched by Japan, has encountered all kinds of difficulties over the last 5 years as had been expected, had to terminate her mission within the last few steps from her success.

Granted that Nozomi, as Japan's first planetary mission, was not able to achieve the maturity as is now taken for granted in other areas such as X-ray astronomy and space plasma physics we nevertheless think that the lessons learnt from operating this spacecraft in the frenzies of it all during the last 5 years must be told to the rest of the world so that our future planetary missions will benefit from the difficulties Nozomi encountered.

I believe that it is the duty of our group to do just that. We were endowed with the resources for that purpose. We must reflect upon failures. That is the only way foward. Both US and Soviet Union have sent more than 30 spacecrafts to Mars to date and 20 of them have failed. (Is this really, really true?, I doubt it, P) We will have to learn from failures. That is the only way forward.

Learn from successes, ride over the faults we found, it is not regrets, not masochistic either, at all, and we can only do forward looking investigations for the humanity.

P

One chunck after above just before two graphs is as follows.

1．On the subject of engineering aspects

There are 4 Japanese spacecrafts which have left the Earth gravitational fields. The first one is the Halley probes, Sakigake and Suisei launched in 1985, then Nozomi, and Hayabusa which is the latest departing in May 2003. However, of all these, Nozomi is the only one which specifically targetted a planet as its destination.

Given limited human resources and finance, very tight scheduling it has been a very challenging task to try and reach a planet. It has been fun, too, of course, with all those technologies to prove in orbit.

First of all, we had this mission analysis. We have gained quite a lot from trying to trade off an innumerable number of engineering aspects in an effort to obtain the maximum benefit from an optimum flight scenario for Nozomi.

I think we have secured the solid foundation for orbital desine and operation technologies, in addition to the experience gained during the flight of Hiten which was launched in 1990, making use of swing-bys with the Earth and the Moon.

Needless to say that we were all very much encouraged and impressed by the frantic efforts shown by this "Orbit and Mission" team, sacrifysing the period non-stop, from Christmass through to the new year period in the face of fuel depletion in the wake of the Earth swing-by in 1998. The heroic dedication that they showed in coming up with a renewed mission plan was a ray of hope for the Japanese space science and technologies.

End of this chunck and this is followed by schematics. I am unsure as to what I might do about them, yet. P

With these two schematics my contributions are minimum and it shouod suffice. The first one on the left is all in English. The second one on the right is more or less self-explanatory. I might add that red is Mars, purple is Nozomi and the green is the Earth. What follows after these graphs is as follows.

Next is the technology for determining the orbit very accurately. We have obtained these technologies and trained ourselves in them from the interactions between the ground based commands and the responses from the spacecraft so tha we now know how we can determine orbits in deep space, line of sight distance, velocity data etc. to put them into an extremely precise dynamical model

Also, autonomous technology. Sometimes, it takes as much as 20 minutes by the radio waves to reach the spacecraft. Therefore, a lot of decisions are left for the spacecraft to make by the onborad computers. We managed to gain a limited amount of insight into the workings of "autonomous decision makings". This experience was put into a maximum use in the case of Hayabusa.

In short, we have obtained a maximum experience from our attempts with perational know-hows and use of relevant communication means to keep communications alive over the distance of more than 3.7 times 10 to the power of 8 km using our 64m diameter dish at Usuda station in central highland area of Japan.

end of this particular chunck. P

What follows is the chunck immediately following the reference to the deep space antenna located in the high land area in central Japan where my family's mountain cottage happens to be only 10 miles from it!

We have also gained a lot in our attemtps to reduce inertial mass of instruments on board. Planetary exploeres need a lot more energy at launch compared with earth circulating satellites. Electronics, cells, antenna, solar batteries, propulsion systems, all these called for new technologies for reduced mass. We believe that we cleared all these hurdles with Nozomi.


(There is a schematic of Nozomi after this, but it should not be a concern to our colleagues. So, I will skip translation here.)


We had not expected to be involved in such a lengthy operation, including a long cruising phase. Under these circumstances, we had to operate very safely given all kinds of constraints and that meant that a lot of the ground support software had to be turned into AI capable, and that brought to us lots and lots of precious experiences.

All this gave us quite a lot for the operation of Hayabusa and all other future planetary missions. On the other hand, there is one notable point of regret in relation to the valve we had incorporated into the control engine in the wake of the US Mars Observer's bitter experience.

What started Nozomi's agony was the half opening of the shut valve which had been put in the downstream of the reverse flow stop valve in the gas supply line which was meant to pressurise the fuel and oxidiser tanks. Other people's experiences are hard to digest.

We did mean to have learnt from the US experience and we might have installed unneccesary redundancies into our system, or did we? In any event, we will need to spend a lot of time looking into the operational aspects of this and all other relevant pitfalls we might have fallen into.

We also have this short-circuitting issue, following the direct hit by solar particles. There have been many failures to date due to these large scale solar flares. We believe that recent explosions crippled at least a dozen spacecrafts worldwide. We cannot afford to say that ours had been up to the international standard for this kind of troubles. We will have to come up with solutions once and forever.

There are two points here, which we need to examine very carefully.

One is that our original design had been such that a command sent to the short-circuitted portion will automatically bring about an exccessive current, activating a circuit breaker, leading to an immediate loss of the current. However, if you come to think about it this particular breaker had been installed there in the first place to protect the whole circuit. We had the reverse effect of this precaution.

Sure, it may be impossible to take everything into account. However, this reverse effect issue, be it with the valves, or breakers, does and will continue to happen, I think. Many other missions of this kind worldwide have seen this "reverse effects" cropping up almost constantly.

It may well be that there are more than one way of making the maximum use of this experience with the breaker. I can say, at least, that we are that much cleverer now as a result.

Second point of possible arguements is this. This particular circuit had been meant to control both telemetry modulation and the heater for control fuel. Granted that this was due to the utmost need to reduce inertial mass. However, if one of the two had been alive for use we might have found a way to come up with a solution. I am sure that this will be one of the focuses of arguments from now on.


As the first of our planetary missions Nozomi left a lot of issues for us to ponder over and come up with viable solutions for. I am sure that we will be willing to spend time on these issues for many years to come.

end of this chunck. P

What follows is the start of the part 2 of this 4 article series. This is immediately followed by the Lyman aplha schematic.


2．About science observations

Nozomi had in total 15 different means of observing the Mars. Following the trouble with the Earth swing-by in 1998 and the period following it for 5 years in wait mode with Sun-centric orbits we made a lot of scientific observations, mostly to check up on the health of the instruments on board, and some of these included very unique observations.

Mars camera (MIC) sent us a two-shot view of the Earth and the Moon in July 1998. This particular photograph did not have any value to professionals and exterts at all, but once it was carried on newspapers it brought in a lot of emotional responses from the general public. It is a kind of " memorial snap shot" of friendly planets, all travelling in the vast expanse of the universe.

Also, Nozomi became the first space probe sent by Japan to have a look at the other side of the Moon for the very first time in history.

Nozomi's ultraviolet spectrographic camera made measurements on the hydrogen Lyman alpha line in the interplanetary space. Hydrogen Lyman alpha radiation from the Sun is scattered by the neutral hydrogen atoms floating in the interplanetary space and lights up the space.

It reminds us of the fact that the air-molecules surrounding the Earth scatter the solar ray, producing the beautiful blue sky for us. Where do all these hydrogen atoms come from? They originate in the material flow called "interplanetary wind" in our galactic system.

This interplanetary wind, as it approaches the Sun, is ionised by the energy of the solar wind and the ultraviolot component of the Sun's radiation. Thes ionised hydrogen atoms will no longer scatter hydrogen Lyman alpha light and the less condensed, by ionisation, interplanetary wind will continue its travel downstream.

It is for this reason that the Lyman alpha light looks stronger in the direction from which it is coming and darker in the opposite direction. From the observation made by Nozomi of the hydrogen Lyman alpha light distribution and its intensity in the interplanetary space we are trying to study the properties of the Solar wind causing all these changes.

End of this particular chunk. P

The previous posting is followed by a schematic called " Internplanetary hydrogen alpha light intensity distribution" (please refer to this with above URL) and what follows comes right after this schematic.

Charged particles are constantly trying to flow out from Earth ionosphere. These particles, however, are trapped by the Earth's magnetic field and unless there are huge disturbances in this magnetic field they cannot hope to escape into space. It has been thought that these "cold (not energetic enough) charged particles are trapped by the magnetic lines which on average pass at the height of about 4 times of the radius of the Earth in the equiatorial plane.

90 % of these trapped particles are hydrogen ions and the rest are mostly helium ions. It is these helium ions which refelect the ultra viloet lgiht radiated the Sun.

Nozomi's XUV, the Extreme Ultra Violet telescope, had the first glimpse of this region for the first time from outside. Nozomi's obervation showed that a lot more than imagined amount of helium ions are leaving from this region into outside space.

(There is an image right after this, which can be enlarged on clicking)

Nozomi's MDC, the dust counter, started its measurement soon after launch in July 1998 and continued its operation for nearly 4 years until April 2002, looking at the space surrounding the Earth and also interplanetary dust velocities and masses.

Nozomi recorded about 100 clear dust collisions over the 4 year period starting with the first identification of a constellation (I may be wrong with this translation, P) on 11 July 1998. Most of these dusts measured by Nozomi's MDC are thought to be originating from asteroids and commets in their Kepler circulation orbit, but some are thought to be clearly originating from outside the Solar system.

In 1999 Nozomi measured at least 4 extra galactic high velocity dusts. Of these, 2 of them had their velocity vectors coinciding with those of the velocities and ditrections with which the Solar system moves relative to surrounding interplanetary gasses. It is therefore thought that these are dusts coming from the interplanetary region.

The fact that these extra solar system dusts were ever measued within the Earth region is one important contribution to our knowledge.

(end of this chunck, P)

What follows is the start of the part 3 of this part 4 series of newsletter by ISAS. I am first translating the captions contained in the very first schematic titled "Electron Spectrum Analyzer/Nozomi". They are as follows.

"Electron velocity direction in the ecliptic frame of reference" is directly on the schematic. Within the schematic itself, the caption around the dot in red says "Solar wind electtrons" and the one on the right to it says "Electrons from the Moon".

Red dot means the direction of the sun and the asterisk looking-like symbol is the magnetic lines. Disk like thing is the shadow cast by the Moon and its tail.

Now, what the chunk at the start says:

"Now, it seems I cannot paste what I copied. Instead of loosing above translation I will let this go first and upload the translated chunk seperately, P"

Nozomi made observations during the time of the Moon swing-by. This was in order to look into the plasma environment surrounding the Moon.

Our Moon absorbs the solar wind which is a flow of plasma from the Sun. However, Nozomi's ISA, Ion particles (maybe, spectrum, P) analyser, detected, for the first time, the plasma which was part of the Solar wind that had been reflected by the front face of the Moon.

We examined ion velocities, Moon position, direction of the Solar wind etc in great details and as a result we found that this particular plasma was closely related to the Moon and that it had not been newly formed by the Moon and that it had rather been formed by the reflection of the Solar wind by the Moon.

It has been often said, as a result of Apollo landers, that some parts of the Lunar rocks are weakly magnetic and this seems to confirm that the shock waves formed by the Solar wind on colliding with these magnetised rocks are reflecting the Solar wind ions.

This would mean that the Solar wind is blocked at the front face of the Moon, leaving a vacuum region at the back with an extremely less plasma density. Nozomi's onboard ESA detected these electrons coming from this vacuum region.

It had been predicted that there was to be a potential difference of a few tens of Volts through the mechanism called "bipolar dispersion (best I could translate, P) between the vacuum region and the Solar wind. However, given that the reflected electrons had something like 480 eV, very high indeed, 10 times the predicted value and We may have to accept that.

(end of this chunk, P)

The posting just befroe this was referring to a schematic called "Electron Spectrum Alalyser/Nozomi" and that is immediately followed by another schematic, actually a chart, and there are two captions on this chart. Chracter strings in white say "Ions reflected by the front face of the Moon" and those in red say "Solar wind ions".

Here below is today's translation immediately following this chart.

I seem to have failed yet again. I cannot paste what I copied. Maybe, I shoud not have copied schematics at the same time? So, I let this go as it stands. P

EIS, the high energy particle counter(?), played its role as a monitor of the Solar wind at positions further away from the Earth and made contributions to the obervation of the Solar flares. In April 2002, it detected a Solar surface explosion which must have caused its own suffering from it.

(There is a chart immediately following this short text and the caption on it says "Maximum number of particles ever measued by Nozomi on 21 April 2002")

Magnetic field measurement device on board Nozomi made observations on the magnetic field emitted by the Sun during its cruise phase. The Solar wind, which is a supersonic plasma wind blowing out of the Sun's surface, carries Sun's surface magnetic field with it into the interplanetary space.

It is not terribly exciting simply to be able to measure these magnetic fields. However, Nozomi's observations were made much further away from the Earth in orbit and in that respect the data obtained was very much precious.

Nozomi made these observations as it was moving further and further away from the Earth and consequently it became possible to study how the magnetic fields of the Solar wind behaves as they move further away from the Sun.

Also, it is not easily generally possible to know the velocity (or speed) of the Solar wind in the vicinity of the Sun. However, we can measure its lateral velocity when a specially dense Corona material gashes out at right angles to the line of sight as seen from the earth.

Nozomi made direct observations of these Corona related materials and consequently we were able to obtain very precious information on how an initial velocity of the Solar wind gradually changes in the interplanetary space. (This might be useful for weather forecast for ISS?, P)

Immediately after the paragraph I translated yesterday is a small schematic, depicting te relative position of the probe against the plobe coming out from the Sun. The caption there says "Please refer to the floowing URL for details of the co from the Sun and Nozomi waiting to observe it". (I am not translating this)

(Now, in what follows, a schematic of "Solar corona observation by phase shaking (?) detection" and this in blue.)

(On the schematic itself there are 3 character sets as follows)

1. Frequency changes (f down= 11/3X f up)

2. transmission wave , S band (2.3 GHz)

3. Reception wave, X band (8.4 GHz)

(There are 2 rectangular blocks underneath these S and X bands and they are: )

(S band transmission) generated by a highly stable (10 to the power of minus 15) hydrogen maser

(X band transmission) reflecting the changes in the refractive index over the outgoing and incoming (inbound) routes

The antenna at the bottom is the Usuda antenna.

Next, immediately following all above is a chart called "Phase change (?) spectrum". The vertical axis is "Phase change power (rad 2/ Hz)" and the horizontal is "frequency change (Hz)". There are 4 character sets on this chart, going clockwise and they are:

1. 12 to 37 Solar radii until the Solar surface (6 to 28 December 2000)

2. Kormograph side (unsure about this translation, must be somebody's name)

3. when very far from the Sun (June 2000)

4. comparative correction signal

Just underneath all these and in pale blue is "space scale (300km/s assumed)"

Perhaps, end of part 3 of this part 4 series, P

What follows is a short paragraph immediately after the Phase change spectrum and immediately before the start of part 3 of this part 4 series.

As I think of all those people all over the world who had sacrificed their lives and designed instruments on board which were never used despite being so close to the Mars I feel so frustrated and sad to the extent of feeling like crying.

Nozomi had a formidable assembly of first rate magnetic and plasma observation means on board. Nozomi was to have played a significant auxilliary role side by side with European and US observers currently going there. My heart is bleeding for my colleagues.

Towards the end of the operationn there came in a flood of mails and telephone calls from all over the world, all encouraging us for then and the future. Here, I only simply aplogize for the fact that we were not able to comply with their aspirations.

Needless to say that our Nozomi team will never ever forget the fervent encouragement given to us by our colleagues and friends worldwide during the last minute death battle in December 2003.

(This is the end of the part 3 of this part 4 series, P)

I have had a look again at what I undertook in terms of translation re Nozomi. Part 4, the last part of the ISAS newsletter 4 part series, happens to be all about 15 instruments on board. I was in two minds as to whether I should translate them.

The biggest reason, of course, is that it now seems silly and useless to translate what all these instruments may have performed simply because the whole thing blew up (excuse me here because I had had only a very quick glance at that time when I undertook to translate this 4 part series and I was not aware exactly what the last part of this series contained!).

However, having translated the main text of this series and finding myself being in full sympathy with the author, I will continue to finish translating what remains in the series. It is only a few evenings work! This will come after my translation of another ISAS newsletter for this evening which effectively contains an ISAS version of Nozomi failure press release, as follows.

Nozomi made swing-bys by the Moon on 24 August and 8 December 1998. On 20 December Nozomi made another swing-by with the Earth at a distance of 1000 km, but Nozomi developped an insufficient propulsion due to the the mulfunction of its thruster valve.

Flight course was corrected, but this led to an over-use of the fuel and it became impossible to insert Nozomi into the Mars transfer orbit. For that reason, the arrival timing was delayed from October 1999 to January 2004.

Nozomi was placed into an orbit, after the Earth swing-bys in December 2002 and June 2003, which would have directed Nozomi towards Mars. However, Nozomi developped another mulfunction with the comms. and thermal control system in April 2003 and franctic efforts on the ground could not recover these difficulties.

A command was sent out on 9 December to change its orbit in order to ensure that Nozomi would not collide with Mars for fear of contamination of the planet in accordance with an international agreenment.

P

What follows and will follow, for the next few days, I think, is the information contained in the last part (part 4) of ISAS newsletter.


（reference materials）

There were 15 instruments for scientiffic observation on board Nozomi.

［Those instrument which conducted observations during Nozomi's cruising phase］

1.MIC（Mars Imaging Camera ）


［Kobe U・ISAS/JAXA・Tokyo U・Kyoto Gakuen U・Kyoto U・Kyushu Tokai U・CNRS］

Result：First time observation by Japan of the other side of the Moon etc

This is a camera for visible region of the spectrum. Nozomi's orbit was to be very eccentric and it was to have travelled in the reverse direction, meaning that it would have captured the whole Mars image constantly. MIC is capable of looking at the global changes in the Mars atmosphere.

For example, these include:

growth of dust storms, transparency changes in the atmosphere due to dusts and hues in the atmosphere, cloud characteristic changes, changes in the polar region appearance, and the mists and their growth as they occur in the polar regions and others.

In addition, according to the original flight plan, Nozomi was to have a few occasions of close encounter with Phobos and Dymos.。

2.UVS（Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer）

［Tohoku U, National Polar Research Institute, Hokkaido U］

Result: Observation of interstellar winds outside our Solar system and others

This instrument was to have a look into the spectrum between 115 nm and 310 nm, specifically, hydrogen and oxygen coronas around Mars, daytime atmospheric lights such as carbon monoxide in the Cameron band (unsure, P) and also the measurement of D/H ratio (deuterium and hydrogen atoms ratio) which might enable us to study the evolution and the process of escaping Martian atmosphere.


3.XUV（Extra Ultraviolet Scanner）

［Nagoya U・ISAS/JAXA・Tokyo U・Rikkyo U・Communications Research Laboratory・Boston U］

Result: Imaging of the Earth plasma region and others

By looking into the Sun light scattered in the extreme ultraviolet region of the spectrum by neutral helium gas and helium ions we can study the distribution and the amount of helium gas and helium ions inthe Martian ionosphere.

Studies of neutral helium gas, for instance, will tell us about the activities inside Mars, such as volcanic activities and water circulation. Helium ion measurments will tell us how these ions came about in the first place and how they are excaping from the ionospher of Mars.


(I will continue with the rest tommorrow on, P)

continuing from yesterday,

4.MDC（Mars Dust Counter）


［Munich Inst of Tech, Tokyo U, ISAS/JAXA・LFM・MPIK・STMS, Kobe U, Dokkyo U, ESA］

Result: detection of interstellar dusts and others

This instrument would have measured both the velocity (1 km/s to 70 km/s) and the mass ( 10km/s dusts at 5×10-15～10-10 g ). Direct measurement of plasma's electronic charge changes due to high speed collision of dusts. Also, comparison with reference data for velocity and mass information.

The utmost objective was detection of Mars dust rings. It has been predicted that these rings were ring-like with Phobos, and torus-like with Dymos in distribution. MDC was supposed to look into this issue and offer information of these dusts distributions.

Nozomi had been detecting other dusts on way to Mars such as those coming from asteroids and comments, also those coming from outside our Solar system. The number was more than 40 by the end of 1999.


5.EIS（Electron and Ion Spectrometer）


［Tamagawa U, Waseda U, Rikkyo U, ISAS/JAXA, Tokyo Inst of Tech,MPIA］

Result: Solar flare observation and others


This instrument was to measure the enegy flux of high energy particles such as electrons, protons, helium ions, oxygeon ions etc over the range of 40 KeV to 500 KeV. Interaction between the solar winds and the uper atmosphere of Mars produces high energy electrons and ions (a few hundred eV to a few tens of KeV) and EIS was to look at these particles with a view to understanding the mechanisms for acceleration.


6.ESA（Electron Spectrum Analyzer）


［Kyoto U, ISA/JAXA, Rikkyo U, Tokyo U, Comms. Res. Lab, Tokyo Inst of Tech］

Result: observation of Lunar wakes

Electron energy flux was to have been measued (12 eV to 16 KeV). This would have given us a lot of information on the structure of magnetosphere and ionosphere of Mars and also the interaction between particle accerleration and wave/particle mutual interaction processes.

P

Continuing from yesterday as follows:


7.ISA（Ion Spectrum Analyzer）


［ISAS/JAXA・kyoto U・Rikkyo U・ Tokyo U, Comms. Res. Lab, Tokyo Inst of Tech］

Result: Obervation of interstellar dusts and others

This was to measure ion energy flux/charge between 10 eV and 16 KeV. These measurements would have given us an insight into the mutual interaction between particle acceleration and wavelets and partilces, in addition to precious information on the structure of magnetosphere and ionosphere around Mars just as those by ESA.


8.IMI（Ion Mass Imager）


［IRF・Rikkyo U・ISAS/JAXA］

Result: Long term monitoring of Solar winds and others

This was a light weight instrument designed to measure mass composition of ions. It was to measure ions with energy between 10eV and 35 KeV per electronic charge. It had a 360 degrees of viewangle and was capable of measuring 3D distribution of ions by making use of the probe's spin.

It would have helped to look into the interaction between the Solar winds and the upper atmosphere of Mars. IMI also had a very wide range of mass covergage and may have spotted the dust ring around Mars by its measurement of plasma composition including dusts.


9.MGF（Magnetic Field Measurement）


［ISAS/JAXA・Nagoya U STE Lab・Okayama U・Tokai U・NASA/GSFC］

Result: Long term monitoring of Solar winds and others

This was an instrument for measuring magnetosphere around Mars. We do not know yet much about Martian magnetic activities.

A US probe, Mars Global Surveyor, recently discovered that Mars had a sporadic places of very strong local magnetic activities and there was no global distribution of magnetism around Mars.

This also might have been one of Nozomi's achievements. However, the fact that within the dayside of Mars the pressure of Solar wind induced plasma and the atmospheric pressure of Mars are balanced out and co-exisiting may still have a lot for space for arguments.

Nozomi was to have contributed towards this argument as it was to fly over at a very low altitude in the Martian atmosphere.


10. Radio astronomy


［ISAS/JAXA］

Result: Observation of Corona structutr of the Sun and others

(This is to continue, P)

Those instruments which were to have started observation once in Martian orbit. (I know that this is silly by now, but I am paying tribute in my own way to those who must have given us information)

1.PWS（Plasma Waves and Sounder）


［Tohoku U, Fukui Inst of Tech, Comms. Res. Lab, Toyama Pre. U, Nat. Polar. Res. Inst, ISAS/JAXA］

A method called "Topside sounder" would have looked into the range bet. 20KHz and 7MHz of the Martian ionospehre structure. At the same time, it would have examined the characteristics of the plasma in relation to the interaction between particles and wavelets. These interactions are the origins of the microscopic processes governing the direct interaction between the ionospheric plasma and the Solar wind induced plasma.


2.LFA（Low Frequency Plasma Wave Analyzer）


［Kyoto U RASC, Toyoma Pref. U, Osaka Inst of Tech, Kanazawa U, Kyoto U of Industry, ISAS/JAXA, Comms. Res. Lab, JAXA HQ］

This was meant to look into the plasma waves of Mars. LFA was to look into the wave profiles (0 Hz to 1 KHz) and the low frequency spectrum ( 10 Hz to 32 KHz). Its scientific objective was to look into the microscopic phenomenon caused by the interaction between the Solar winds and the Phobos, boundary region between the Solar winds and the Ionosphere, and the macroscopic plasma environment.


3.PET（Probe for Electron Temperature）


［ISAS/JAXA, Comms. Res. Lab, Gunma U, Nagoya U Ist of STE, Michigan U, MPIA, Korean Inst of Space］

This would have measued the electron temp. in the Martian ionosphere. One of tis objectives was to portray the thermal structure of the Martian ionosphere by continucously measuring the electron temp.

(only 2 more entries to translate!, P)

4.NMS（Neutral Mass Spectrometer）


［NASA/GSFC, Michigan U, Graz U (unsure about spelling, P), Michigan U, Arizona U, ISAS/JAXA, Tokyo U, HAwaii U, and other］

This was an analyser which would have examined the interaction betweeen the composition of the Maritian neutral particles and the density. It would have measured the neutral gas with mass number between 1 and 60 and with the density range between
2×104～1012cm-3.

5.TPA（Thermal Plasma Analyzer）

Calgary U, ISAS/JAXA・NRC・CSA, Victoria U, Comms.Res.Lab, Western Ontario U, Alberta U, Nagoya U STE Res. Lab,. Hokkaido U

(This is effectively the end of my translation session. I am prepared to contribute more if asked, particularly in relation to my ealier postings. P.)

I think that all of UMSF owes you an enormous debt of thanks for the work you have done in translating all of these documents.

Thank you Pandaneko. You are worth your weight in gold!!

Pandaneko probably knows but maybe other group members don't, that there is also a Japanese book on the history of Nozomi. See http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/2005/05/523_5e8b.html I have a copy of it, although I can't read Japanese.
Of course I am not suggesting that you may translate it for the forum...

No, Paolo, thanks, anyway. No, I did not know that such a book existed. A quick look at its introduction suggests that it is a substantial work. I do not intend to eat into his time as he lives on it as a professional writer. It describes 12 years of Nozomi's life.

Looking back on Nozomi, my association with it started like this. I was walking about on a theatre stage one day many years ago and somebody, a newspaper colleague of mine who had, theoretically at least, shared a vested interest in the fate of Nozomi and the Beagle 2, shouted at me with the news, saying that there was no nozomi for the Nozomi.

That was a bad pan (nozomi is hope, Kibo with ISS is also nozomi, but in japanised Chinese) and I hated him for that.

I have been wanting to know why ever since. The Forum has given me an incentive to dig into the history and I am most grateful for that.

P

I have been thinking about this, for quite some time by now. I suppose that eventually, the energy density inside and at the ever thinning wavefront (emotionally...) far and far out there means that even getting feeble radio waves does not mean anything signally meaningful and useful.

OK, relay satellites, but then, after all those things, we will still be looking like goldfish contained and trapped in a glass bottle placed in this universe even if we still want to interact with the rest of this world?

If so, what then might we do?

P

I was not exactly sure where I should place this posting. It is an extremely short summary (my summary) of a newspaper artcicle that appeared in Nihon Keizai Shimbun (a Japanese newspaper specialising in financial matters) here and its time stamp is 2012.3.6.2:06, meaning 02:06 on 6 March 2012.

Its URL: http://www.nikkei.com/news/headline/articl...3E09C9CEAE2E2E2

The jist of what it says is that in around 2018 JAXA may launch a probe which will sample dusts at around 40 km height over Mars to bring them back. A 10 man team has been set up to look into the techinical details. It does mention Nozomi's failure and NASA's probe going there at the moment.

Pandaneko