Japan's space agency announced on Thursday, April 28, that it abandoned efforts to restore the operations of its multimillion-dollar satellite officially known as ASTRO-H, or Hitomi.
According to the website phys.org, Hitomi had the mission to use its X-ray telescopes, gamma ray detectors and imagers for probing the mysteries of black holes and observing neutron stars and galaxy clusters. After determining that it was "highly likely" that its two solar arrays had broken off at their bases, the Japanese Space Agency said it would stop trying to fix the satellite.
More than a month after its launch from southern Japan on Feb. 17, the satellite lost contact with the ground space command on March 26. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) previously announced on Feb. 29 on its official website that the satellite reached orbit and it was in a stable condition.
But little over a month after its launch, in the evening of March 26, JAXA announced that it lost Hitomi. Initially, it was thought that the lack of communication with Hitomi was just an anomaly, and while working toward a recovery, the space agency was able to receive a short signal from it.
According to International Business Times, later investigation revealed that, while the main body remained spinning in orbit, the satellite had broken up into several pieces. The spin has been accelerated by incorrect signals and incorrect programming. The solar battery panels and an observation platform were torn away by the resulting increase in centrifugal force, according to a Thursday report on Asahi Shimbun.
Director of JAXA's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Saku Tsuneta, explained on Thursday during a press conference that the malfunction was caused by human errors. But since they were not able to detect those errors, a bigger problem lies with the entire system.
JAXA also acknowledged in a statement on Thursday that the signals previously thought to be originating from Hitomi after March 26 were actually from another satellite, as they proved to have a different frequency. and were actually from another satellite.
JAXA's statement also said that based on information from overseas organizations and its own analyses, the space agency will stop its efforts to restore Hitomi and will resume only "on the investigation of anomaly causes."
