Wow! Just like --
-- Red Dwarf! Except five years lost in space instead of three million. And no Cat. Or Rimmer. Or Lister.
Well, not very like, really, I suppose. Nevertheless, a very cool recovery of a nearly-lost mission. Sake all around.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released the first photographs of Venus taken by its much-delayed Akatsuki planetary probe. Akatsuki (meaning Dawn) was due to have been in orbit five years ago, but its main engine failed as it was making its final maneuver, off around the Sun. Years of careful rocketry from …
I know all is complete in the universe when it's a KSP reference in connection with some IRL space exploration. KSP being so close to the real thing.
I mean, who has not knocked off a main engine or over cooked a burn, to then have to make a couple more passes and use just some RCS thrusters to get the final capture to orbit...
"The first images aren't the best we're going to see by far, since the spacecraft is so far away from the target, and it won't be until April that they will be operating at the proper altitude"
While they will be lowering their apoapsis over the coming months the periapsis is already 400km, so once every 13 days 14 hours they're already getting about as close as they plan to. According to the JAXA site the two images posted in this article were taken from an altitude of 72000kms.
The orbital measurements in this article are back to front.
The periapsis is the lowest part of the orbit and the apoapsis the highest.
I'm surprised that they're flying a knackered spacecraft so low. Atmospheric drag at 400km above Venus will be significant.
That they've managed to achieve planetary orbit at all solely on auxiliary thrusters is a testament to the ingenuity of the scientists involved. I'd say they'll likely try to circularise the orbit if they have enough fuel left, possibly combined with aerobraking at the periapsis (where the orbital velocity would be highest.) Circularising the orbit with such a high apoapsis would raise the periapsis well beyond atmospheric range once completed.
If we are being precise, the use of the generic terms apoapsis and periapsis could be improved by using the Venus specific terms apocytherion and pericytherion.
(ref: Deep Space Craft: An Overview of Interplanetary Flight By Dave Doody)
Not that it really matters....
Actually, I think it does matter a bit. For example, prior to this article, I was blissfully unaware that "apogee/perigee" was specific only to Earth. I knew that "helion" was for solar orbits but thought "gee" was for all others. I am now corrected and even more educated on the terminology thanks to your further detail.
This, plus the clever and patient boffinry to turn the lemons into Venusian lemonade? Much win.
In light of this discussion I here submit my proposed list of apo-/peri- suffixes for major solar system bodies. Some are gleaned from science fiction works, KSP, known scientific terms and some I just derived based on an imprecise algorithm of prefixing apo- and peri- to possessive tenses of Greek deities:
aphelion / perihelion: Sun (General scientific term)
apohermion / perihermion: Mercury (My guess: Mercury = Hermes)
apocytherion / pericytherion: Venus (See comments above: Cytherian = Venusian)
apogee / perigee: Earth (General scientific term)
apolune / perilune: Moon (Used in the Apollo program)
apoareon / periareon: Mars (My guess: Ares = Mars)
apojove / perijove: Jupiter (Arthur C. Clarke used this in 2010)
apochrone / perichrone: Saturn (My guess: Chronos = Saturn)
apourane / periourane: Uranus (My guess: Ouranos = Uranus)
aposeidion / periposeidion: Neptune (My guess: Poseidon = Neptune)
apodemetrion / peridemetrion: Ceres (My guess: Demeter = Ceres)
apohadeon / perihadeon: Pluto (My guess: Hades = Pluto*)
apastron / periastrion: orbit of any star other than the Sun (Brian Aldiss used this in his Helliconia trilogy)
apoapsis / periapsis: orbit of any object without specificity (this article and KSP)
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*The recent New Horizons encounter with Pluto didn't involve orbiting that body, so technically the terms apohadeon and perihadeon don't apply. At least, I never saw them or any similar apo-/peri- term used by the New Horizons team.
Gotten would have been: n common use in the UK around the time the Pilgrim Fathers buggered off on the Mayflower, it fell out of use in the UK but has remained on the left side. I suppose if language is democratic then English the way the yanks speak it is in the majority.
Having lived over ther for a while I find I use gotten quite often.