Akatsuki managed to enter Venus’s orbit, yesterday at 4 PM.
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration agency announced they’ve granted Akatsuki, the wonder-probe, the benefit of the doubt. Akatsuki slings into Venus’s orbit, taking some amazing shots of the planet’s dense and toxic atmosphere.
As they say, no one can hear you scream out there, in the void of space and that there is no place for failure when it comes to space exploration. But it would seem that the probe managed to live up to expectations. Yesterday, at approximately 4 PM, the unmanned space probe managed to fire up its thrusters, preparing to set a standard orbit with Venus. Several hours later, the space technicians working on the project announced that Akatsuki was successful in entering Venus’s orbit.
This is not the first attempt of studying Venus by the Japanese space probe. According to their own declarations, the probe was scheduled to place itself into the orbit of Venus, where it would take measurements of the planet’s corrosive atmosphere. The first time Akatsuki tried to enter Venus’s grave was 5 years ago. However, something unexpected happened and the probe missed its mission by a long shot.
According to the technicians working on the projects, one of the fuel valves from the engine broke down, while the ground crew was trying to initiate the burning procedure. The end result was that the space-probe managed to fire up its engines, but in doing so, it missed the planet by a long shot.
After 5 years of testing and tweaking, Akatsuki got back on track, ready to take another crack at entering the planet’s atmosphere. In order to save themselves the trouble of rendering the probe’s engines useless, the engineers working on the probe decided that a little change is in order. So, instead of one big thruster, the space probe received several small ones. Thus, the probe’s overall maneuverability was greatly increased while the chances of engine failure have decreased.
And so, on the 6th of December, as the probe was approaching the toxic planet, the ground crew decided to fire up four of the probe’s onboard thrusters. The engine burn was successful and the probe was on its way towards Venus. Several hours later, the ground team was able to confirm that the space probe managed to position itself as to be caught in Venus’s gravitational field.
In order to officially confirm Akatsuki’s position relative to the planet, a certain amount of time must pass. But, as the ground team declared, everything looks good and are lights are showing green.
Image source:www.wikimedia.org
