Update: As of 1611 UTC, the IKAROS blog is reporting “IKAROS state has been confirmed to be good.” More images and data are in the works, but we’re not likely to see anything until tomorrow.
It’s getting late in Japan (2306 JST as I write, or 1406 UTC), and although a JAXA tweet promised new photos for today, the IKAROS blog is still showing the same deployment image we looked at yesterday. More as it becomes available and, naturally, I’m also following the fortunes of Hayabusa, now on final approach to the Woomera Test Range in South Australia. Re-entry is targeted for June 13. Meanwhile, I’m holding on a story (not on IKAROS) that comes off embargo this afternoon and will be posting today’s main entry in a few hours.
There has just been a tiny update on the blog, at 1:11 a.m. Japanese time, claiming that IKAROS is fine and that we’ll learn more in “a moment”, whatever that means …
Hi Paul and Daniel;
I was a little bit worried there regarding the deploying step for the sail. I am glad that everything seems to be going OK.
All my life I have looked forward to the day when solar sailing first begins. Here with IKAROS, my dreams and indeed the collective dreams of all practicioners of Tau Zero are being realized.
I would like to express many thanks to Paul and Daniel and other folks for keeping the Tau Zero Centauri Dreams readership posted regarding IKAROS. I have found these latest threads especially informative.
Do we know Hayabusa’s relative velocity to Earth? Apollo missions took about 3 days to reach lunar orbit, if I’m remembering right. Hayabusa is about three days out. It would be amusing to be able to calculate when Haybusa re-enters cisLunar space.
Quite excited about IKAROS progress; thank you for highlighting mission status here on Centauri Dreams.
Istvan, my pleasure to help with IKAROS info. It’s been tricky given JAXA’s practice of holding information close — let’s hope we have more photos soon. Re Hayabusa, I don’t have the figure but maybe one of the readers will. I’ll post it if I find it first.