Categories: MissionsVenus

Japan’s Akatsuki to Reach Venus Today

[/caption]

Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft will arrive at Venus later today, and will enter orbit around the planet. The box-shaped orbiter will make observations from an elliptical orbit, from a distance of between 300 and 80,000 kilometers (186 to 49,600 miles), looking for — among other things — signs of lightning and active volcanoes.

The Akatsuki probe (Japanese for “Dawn”) has been traveling for six months, and launched along with the IKAROS solar sail mission. The timing for the orbit insertion burn is Dec. 6 at about 6:50 p.m. EST (2350 GMT), which is early Tuesday morning Japan Standard Time.

You can see more information at this Japanese website, or Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society at translated the timing of events in English.

There’s also an English-version website that is providing some updates.

Twitters can follow Akatsuki. (in Japanese — Google translate works well on the spacecraft’s Twitter homepage.)

This is Japan’s first mission to Venus. The Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, hopes the spacecraft will work for two years studying Venus’s clouds and weather in order to gain a better understanding of how the planet’s atmosphere evolves over time.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/

Recent Posts

Is the Habitable Worlds Observatory a Good Idea?

The Habitable Worlds Observatory, NASA’s planned successor to the James Webb Space Telescope, will be…

14 hours ago

Spring-loaded Robot Could Explore the Asteroid Belt Almost Indefinitely

The asteroid belt beckons - it contains enough resources for humans to expand into the…

1 day ago

Stunning 80 Megapixel Image of a Stellar Nursery

RCW 38 is a molecular cloud of ionized hydrogen (HII) roughly 5,500 light-years from Earth…

1 day ago

Many Stars Could Have Sent Us ‘Oumuamua

When astronomers detected the first known interstellar object, 'Oumuamua, in 2017, it sparked a host…

1 day ago

Construction of Roman Continues With the Addition of its Sunshade

NASA continues to progress with the development of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST),…

2 days ago

A Flaming Flower in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Our neighbour, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), is rich in gas and dust and hosts…

2 days ago