Spacecraft to orbit Venus...five years after it first tried
A JAPANESE spacecraft will start to orbit the planet Venus - five years later than planned.
Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft will orbit Venus
Akatsuki - Japanese for dawn - has been orbiting the sun ever since it failed to get into the gravitational pull of Earth’s nearest neighbour in 2010.
Engineers are getting ready to fire four thrusters which will move the spacecraft into position to orbit the moonless planet.
Venus is Earth's nearest neighbour
Mission controllers will know within a few hours whether the propulsion burn went as expected but it may take a few days after that to confirm whether Akatsuki is orbiting Venus.
The spacecraft is expected to end up carrying out a stretched, elliptical orbit.
Orbit of 'AKATSUKI'
Now we are nervous, but at the same time very excited
Team member Takeshi Imamura said: “The past five years have been a tough period for us — tracking a spacecraft which does not yield science data is not fun for scientists.
“Now we are nervous, but at the same time very excited. Venus is a stone’s throw from us.”
The surface of Venus
The craft, which was first launched in May 2010, was designed to study Venus’ atmosphere, which rotates at as much as 100 metres a second.
It carries five cameras which will study different weather features.
Because it has spent more time closer to the Sun than originally designed, the craft is warmer than expected, which may have harmed some of its equipment.
The planet Venus
This is not the first time a Japanese spacecraft has ended a second chance to collect data.
Hayabusa managed to survive collisions to collect samples from the Itokawa asteroid and in 2003 the Nozomi spacecraft, which was supposed to go to Mars, was destroyed by a solar flare.