Earth observing satellite feared losat Japanese

Artist's concept of ALOS in space. Credit: JAXA

7.30 a. m. the spacecraft switched to a low- power mode around. Where the satellite’s three observation instruments shut down to conserve electricity, Japan time Friday (22230 GMT Thursday).

According to JAZA, telemetry indicated ALOS lost ass power later Friday.

A  JSXA press release said, the power generation has been rapidly deteriorating, and we currently cannot confirm power generation.

Jan.24,2006 ALOS launched aboard an H-2A rocket. Nicknamed Daichi the Japanese word for land. The largest single deployable array on any Japanese spacecraft, the satellite unfurled a 72- foot-long solar panel. It was designed to produce at least 4 kilowatts of power at the end of the satellite’s life.

The craft narrowly achieved JAXA’s stated goal of five years of operations, the ALOS mission was supposed to last three years.

The statement said, JAXA is investigating the cause of this phenomenon while taking necessary measures.

The last 15 years two other electrical system failures have ended major Japanese satellite observation missions.

Which lost electricity in October 2003 and was never heard from again, the ALOS anomaly signature is similar to the failure of the Advanced Earth observing Satellite 2.or ADEOS2.

If the declining electricity levels were a symptom of another issue, JAXA did not announce what part of the power generation system could be at fault on ALOS.

ALOS mapped the Earth’s surface, in its five-years mission, created three-dimensional terrain models, volcanoes, hurricanes and the March 11 tsunami that ravaged Japan. Snapped thousands of pictures and observed the aftermath of earthquakes.

Japan’s  ALOS imagery showed inundated northeast coastline in the days after the tsunami, and its radar instrument detected parts of the Japanese island of Honshu were displaced by up to 10 feet by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that spawned the tsunami.

A stereo mapping imager to derive 3D elevation maps with a resolution of 2.5 meters, of 8.2 feet. the spacecraft’s  three payloads included PRISM. Collected data on land use and vegetation, AVNIR 2, an advanced visible and near infrared radiometer. A synthetic aperture radar named PALSAR bounced radar signals off Earth’s surface for day and night observations in all weather conditions.