Return to Venus of AKATSUKI, the Japanese Venus Orbiter

Details Return to Venus of AKATSUKI, the Japanese Venus Orbiter Return to Venus of AKATSUKI, the Japanese Venus Orbiter

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufm.p13a1646n&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #P13A-1646

Other

[0343] Atmospheric Composition And Structure / Planetary Atmospheres, [5405] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Atmospheres, [6295] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Venus

Scientific paper

Japanese Venus Climate Orbiter 'AKATSUKI' (PLANET-C) was proposed in 2001 with strong support by international Venus science community and approved as an ISAS mission soon after the proposal. AKATSUKI and ESA's Venus Express complement each other in Venus climate study. Various coordinated observations using the two spacecraft have been planned. Also participating scientists from US have been selected. Its science target is to understand the climate of Venus. The mission life we expected was more than 2 Earth years in Venus orbit. AKATSUKI was successfully launched at 06:58:22JST on May 21, by H-IIA F17. After the separation from H-IIA, the telemetry from AKATSUKI was normally detected by DSN Goldstone station (10:00JST) and the solar cell paddles' expansion was confirmed. AKATSUKI was put into the 3-axis stabilized mode in the initial operation from Uchinoura station and the critical operation was finished at 20:00JST on the same day. The malfunction, which happened during the Venus Orbit Insertion (VOI) on7 Dec, 2010 is as follows. We set all commands on Dec. 5. Attitude control for Venus orbit insertion (VOI) was automatically done on Dec. 6. Orbital maneuver engine (OME) was fired 08:49 JST on Dec. 7. 1min. after firing the spacecraft went into the occultation region and we had no telemetry, but we expected to continuous firing for 12min. Recording on the spacecraft told us later that, unfortunately the firing continued just 152sec. and stopped. The reason of the malfunction of the OME was the blocking of check valve of the gas pressure line to push the fuel to the engine. We failed to make the spacecraft the Venus orbiter, and it is rotating the sun with the orbital period of 203 days. As the Venus orbit the sun with the period of 225 days, AKATSUKI has a chance to meet Venus again in 5 or 6 years depending on the orbit correction plan. Let us summarize the present situation of AKATSUKI. Most of the fuel still remains. But the condition of the propulsion system is unclear. ISAS is examining various scenarios of second Venus orbit insertion depending on the conditions of the check valve and the OME. Thermal condition during the extended cruise phase is severe. The solar flux (W/m2) to which the spacecraft is exposed from May 21, 2010 (Launch date) to the end of 2016. We expected about 2600W/m2 in the Venus orbit, but it is exposed to more than 3600W/m2 at perihelion (0.6AU from the sun). The temperatures of the instruments exposed to space gradually increased as the spacecraft approaching the perihelion. We tried to minimize the number of instruments whose temperatures exceed the allowed upper limits by letting a certain side of the spacecraft face to the sun. After passing the perihelion every instruments have been working normally. The degradation of the reflectivity of the outer film (MLI) during the extended cruise may influence the temperature tendency. Laboratory tests to evaluate the degradation are ongoing. We operate the test maneuver of the OME in September and hopefully the orbit maneuver in November, which leads the spacecraft close to Venus in 2015. We will report the result in the presentation.

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