Japan's Akatsuki space mission may not have panned out exactly the way its planners expected, but it was still able to beam back a treasure trove of data about the Earth's sister planet, Venus.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) originally intended the Akatsuki spacecraft to orbit Venus. The probe spent its first five years in space circling the Sun before the space agency was finally able to rescue its orbiter and set it back on course four months ago.
Akatsuki's observations [PDF, In Japanese] included high quality images of what appears to be streaks of acidic clouds and a strange bow-shaped cloud located in Venus' atmosphere.
Masato Nakamura, a JAXA planetary scientist and project manager of the Akatsuki mission, explained that despite experiencing initial setbacks, the instruments onboard the spacecraft seem to be in good working condition.
The plan is to have Akatsuki execute a minor maneuver in the next couple of years designed to keep it away from the solar-power-draining shadow of Venus. This will give the space probe enough power to orbit the planet for five years instead of only two years as initially set by mission planners.
Members of the Akatsuki project presented the probe's latest observations during the International Venus Conference in the United Kingdom. One of the images shown was a high-quality infrared photograph of Venus's sulfuric acid clouds, which according to project scientist Takeshi Imamura, point to the complicated process behind the formation of clouds.
The researchers expect to receive more detailed results from Akatsuki in the coming days as the spacecraft continues its orbit around the planet.
"We will achieve better spatial resolution still," Takehiko Satoh, lead investigator for Akatsuki's 2-micrometre infrared camera, IR2, said. "We promise to give a fantastic data set to the research community for years."
People who attended the conference were intrigued by the bow shape that was captured using the space probe's long-wave infrared (LIR) camera. The mysterious cloud formation stretched across Venus from pole to pole and appeared to rotate with the planet's surface instead of its atmosphere. The researchers suspect that the bow could be connected to features on the planet's surface.
The success of the Akatsuki mission serves as a significant morale booster to scientists since it is now the only functioning space probe orbiting Venus.
