Hitomi, a known Japanese satellite has now been officially deemed as lost, after the satellite disintegrated in orbit. The return caused the satellite to be torn apart while spinning out of control in space. More shocking is the circumstances behind the lost satellite. Hitomi is still undergoing an investigation, however, the individuals that had carried out their own extensive research, have come forward claiming that the bad data inside their software package had resulted in the loss of $286 Million. This is not to mention that the possibility of over 10 years of research and data has also been lost.
Hitomi, also referred to as ‘ASTRO-H,’ was successfully launched on February 17, 2016. Just over a month after the launch, on March 28th, any and all efforts were immediately ceased in attempting to recover the lost contraption. An investigation is currently being carried out, more than likely, to prevent any further ‘accidents’ from happening.
The software update, however, may not have been the only issue with the satellite causing its destruction. During that time frame, there was another satellite passing over the South Atlantic Anomaly, which inevitably placed the Hitomi satellite in a communications blackout region. This is valuable information, as new insights state there was no active ground monitoring for the situation.
There is another aspect to this colossal destruction: the belts of radiation encircling the Earth dipped lower in this particular region, causing the density to be higher than in other parts of the orbit. High-energy particles resulted, causing a possible disruption of some onboard components.
Once this happened, the Japanese satellite had initiated a phase known as ‘Safe Hold’ mode, forcing the thrusters to kick and attempt to stop the rotation of the machine. Shortly afterwards, the condemned contribution of the software-update engaged. This same configuration information only increased the spinning cycle even further. As a result, Hitomi’s rotation started to exceed that of the original design parameters.
Once all of the events happened, several parts from the satellites started to come off and fly into space. In total, there were at least 5 pieces that have been observed, including the main body.
Hitomi was designed and developed to study the hard X-Ray sources within the structures of the universe. One of the cleanest advantages of using the X-Ray satellites, such as what Hitomi, is they are unable to be stopped by elements such as dust clouds. However, contrary to the complex structure, it appears it wasn’t a match from buggy software updates.
Sources: Techworm.
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