Poor Weather At Launch Site Forced Launch Cancellation
Japan's Venus Climate Orbiter Akatsuki mission along with the
solar sail demonstrator project IKAROS were set to launched late
Monday (US EDT) from the The Tanegashima Space Center in the
southern portion of Kagoshima Prefecture, but poor weather at the
launch site forced flight directors to scrub the mission. No new
launch attempt date has been announced, according to the blog of
The Planetary Society.
Akatsuki -- which means "dawn" -- is designed to explore the
atmosphere of Venus, and its scientific instruments include cameras
that will study the planet in wavelengths from ultraviolet to the
mid-infrared. The mission's goal is to help answer the question of
how Venus and Earth, sister worlds in size and composition, evolved
into such different planets.
The second mission's name, IKAROS, stands for Interplanetary
Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun. It is a solar sail
that is designed to employ both photon propulsion and thin film
solar power generation during its interplanetary cruise.
The Planetary Society, a long-time proponent of solar sail
technology, plans to launch its own solar sail, Lightsail-1, early
in 2011. This mission is remarkable for its funding source --
Planetary Society members around the world, including an anonymous
gift of $1 million from a long-time member.
Flying aboard both spacecraft will be the names of the members
of The Planetary Society, along with greetings from others who
signed up to send their names and messages to Venus. The Planetary
Society and Japan's space exploration center, JSPEC/JAXA, have an
agreement to collaborate and cooperate on public outreach and on
technical information and results from both IKAROS and
LightSail-1.
Venus
"The Planetary Society is proud to be a member of the IKAROS
team," said Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary
Society. "Each step forward in solar sailing brings humanity closer
to the dream of interstellar flight with light."
LightSail is a three-part program that begins with a flight to
Earth orbit, high enough to reach above the tangible atmosphere and
fly with only the pressure of sunlight. LightSail-2 will attain a
higher orbit and fly much longer. LightSail-3 is the most ambitious
mission, heading toward the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1 to test
solar sailing for an early-warning system against solar storms and
to help protect technological civilization from potential
disasters.
The names and messages from Planetary Society members and the
public are printed in fine letters on an aluminum plate carried
aboard Akatsuki, and are on a silica mini-DVD aboard IKAROS. This
archival-quality mini-DVD was provided by The Planetary Society
with data writing from Plasmon OMS.
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