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Lost In Space: Japan Loses Contact With Hitomi, The Country’s Newest Space Telescope

By Joanna Jaguar
Published on: 05:57 PST, Mar 29, 2016

Hitomi, a Japanese satellite launched last month carrying an instrument from NASA on board, has become lost in space, according to reports.

The country’s newest space telescope was launched on February 17 with the intention of studying “energetic space objects,” such as supermassive black holes, galaxy clusters, and neutron stars by observing energy wavelengths found in x-rays and gamma-rays, but the satellite has lost contact with Earth, and may have either broken apart, or is tumbling out of control through space, reports National Geographic.

Hitomi — which means “pupil of the eye” — lost contact with Earth on Saturday, and radar observations since then have found that the satellite is in at least five pieces, and appears to have suddenly changed course. However, observers at JAXA — the Japanese Space Agency — have witnessed the space telescope giving of some sort of “flash,” which means that though Hitomi seems to be in pieces, there is hope that those pieces are just things like insulation, rather than large chunks of the spacecraft. These flashes could also mean that Hitomi is just tumbling through space, which would account for the drastic course change.

JAXA officials also said they received a “trickle of a signal” from Hitomi, leading Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, to lean towards the idea that Hitomi is tumbling through space, and the faint signals are being generated as the space telescope sweeps past the Earth. Despite the fairly dire situation, McDowell says he’s not giving up hope yet, as this wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened, and was successfully resolved.

“I truly have not given up hope. We lost contact with SOHO for months and fully recovered it. ALEXIS had a solar panel break loose and was tumbling, but they learnt how to fly it and began science mission a couple months late. So it’s a long shot—and I refuse to put a number on the probability—but there is precedent for things being this bad and it turning out OK.”

Two potential reasons for Hitomi tumbling through space are a battery explosion, or a gas leak, either of which could have put the satellite into a spin, and caused it to lose contact with Earth. However, Professor Goh Cher Hiang, project director of the satellite programme at the National University of Singapore, said that battery explosions are very rare. According to BBC, Hiang also said that a gas leak is possible, but the problems could have also stemmed from other external factors.

“It could also be from a collision with something in space, either from outer space or a man-made object already in space.”

This isn’t the first time a satellite has become lost in space. Last December, a Russian defence satellite was declared lost after it failed to separate from its rocket; in 1993, ALEXIS, a U.S. x-ray satellite lost contact with Earth for months before engineers were able to re-establish contact, and Akatsuki, a Japanese spacecraft that was launched to orbit Venus five years ago was lost in space after a valve broke. However, the case of Akatsuki proves that one should never give up hope — after 5 years of aimlessly traversing the solar system, the Japanese Space Agency managed to finally get the satellite into orbit around Venus late last year.

Though at the moment, Hitomi appears to be lost in space, Professor Hiang says all hope is not lost. If they are able to re-establish contact with the satellite, then there is a chance that they can fix the problem. If contact cannot be established, however, “then [they] are in trouble,” and Hitomi may be lost for good.

[Image via NASA/JAXA]

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