JAXA has confirmed through telemetry that the Akari infrared space telescope has deployed its solar array paddle successfully. The spacecraft, which was launched at 6:28 a.m. local time Wednesday aboard an M-V-8 rocket, originally was named ASTRO-F, but mission controllers renamed it Akari, meaning a “light,” as soon as it entered orbit.
Akari is the 21st scientific satellite launched by the space agency. Its launcher was set to a vertical angle of 81.5 degrees, and the flight azimuth was 143.0 degrees.
The launch vehicle flew smoothly, JAXA said in a statement, and after the third-stage engine burnout, controllers confirmed the spacecraft was safely injected into its scheduled orbit of a perigee altitude of approximately 304 kilometers (195 miles) and an apogee altitude of approximately 733 kilometers (469 miles) with an inclination of approximately 98.2 degrees.
JAXA started receiving signals from Akari at 6:43 a.m. at the Perth tracking station in Australia, and from those signals verified the spacecraft had separated successfully and was operating in a preprogrammed spin mode. Further telemetry at 8:46 a.m. relayed from the Santiago station in Chile informed controllers that the craft had shifted from spin mode to spin-downed mode as scheduled. The Santiago data also confirmed that the solar array paddle had deployed and began generating power.
One slight problem developed, when the spacecrafts attitude control was not completed. JAXA said based on its investigation, an unknown factor in the output of the two-dimensional solar sensor created the difficulty, so controllers shifted Akari to attitude-control mode using the Earth sensor and gyroscope.
At 12:44 p.m., JAXA received telemetry from the GN station in Kiruna, Sweden, that the spacecrafts power output had stabilized.
“The overall health condition of the Akari, apart from the two-dimensional solar sensor, is stable,” the JAXA statement said, “and we do not perceive that any problem will arise for the scheduled observation operations.
