Japanese satellite to study black holes, collapsed in Earth orbit – Moskovsky Komsomolets

He stopped communicating, and later astronomers found five debris

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Close to Japanese Astronomia X satellite ASTRO-H researchers found five fragments, which are supposed to represent fragments of the probe. It became known yesterday, March 26, communication with the satellite, designed to study black holes from heavy duty gravity, and other outer space objects and phenomena, has been lost.

Photo: morguefile.com

ASTRO-H, also known as Hitomi, was launched on 17 February this year. At the time when the connection was lost, took the calibration and verification of various probe systems, he did not have time to start full operation. Debris on the satellite’s orbit have been discovered by American experts, representing the Joint Space Operations Center of US Strategic Command. This happened about the same time when the connection was lost, which speaks in favor of the assumption that the destruction of the satellite, transmits nature.com.

Some experts believe that all is not lost for the satellite. In particular, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, points out that even if the five detected objects will really spacecraft debris, we can talk more about the five small breakaway fragments instead of complete destruction of the artificial satellite. Moreover, as the say Japanese experts, since the loss of communication they had received at least one short beep, so hope that the relationship will still be restored, lost not until the end.

Telescopes, which was equipped with a new generation of satellite, should help in the study of black holes, as well as many other cosmic phenomena, which can observe only in X-rays. In particular, we are talking about X-ray clusters of galaxies, and even dark matter. While scientists find it difficult to name with confidence causes damage, but as one of the versions is considered a short-circuit.

This is not the first Astronomia X satellite Japanese space agency JAXA, the exploitation of which will soon marked by extraordinary events. In 2000, the space telescope ASTRO-E crashed at startup, while the extracted at Suzaku’s orbit a few weeks after the start of faulty spectrometer – the main component of the probe. Then the reason for this was the leak of helium.