An artist's impression of the Hitomi satellite in orbit. Note: That scary, all devouring X-ray source isn't actually that close to Earth. (credit: JAXA)
The Japanese space agency, JAXA, lost communication with its new Hitomi X-ray astronomy satellite on Saturday, spending Sunday trying unsuccessfully to reestablish control over the spacecraft. The prognosis appears to be fairly grim after the US Strategic Command’s Joint Space Operations Center revealed Sunday that it is tracking five pieces of debris associated with the satellite.
It is not clear whether Hitomi struck a piece of space debris in its orbit about 580km above Earth or what else might have precipitated the loss of communication. Either way, scientists lamented the apparent failure of an instrument that would have allowed them to probe much deeper into the relatively unstudied field of X-ray astronomy.
High-energy but very-short-wavelength X-rays are absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere. To observe them, scientists must therefore send instruments into the upper atmosphere or into space itself. Unlike other kinds of observational astronomy, then, X-ray astronomy is a fairly new field.
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