IKAROS Deployment Photos Arriving

by | Jun 11, 2010 | Sail Concepts | 1 comment

IKAROS now appears to be fully deployed and generating power from its photovoltaic cells. The IKAROS blog even has a photo of the cake with which the sail team celebrated the success, but you’ll also want to go to this IKAROS page for a look at further imagery, one of which is the photo shown below. The page has four similar photographs from different cameras aboard the spacecraft, and if I’m reading this right, more photos will be posted here as they become available. JAXA has also made available this news release about the deployment.

Lionel Ward, our Japanese translator extraordinaire, will be sending translations of the IKAROS blog postings and recent tweets from JAXA later today, and I’ll post these as a way of archiving the information here. This afternoon (1800 or so UTC) I’ll have today’s regular Centauri Dreams post up, but I wanted to share this image and give you the pointer for more as soon as possible. What an achievement this mission has turned out to be even this early on, and we now have a fascinating period ahead when we learn about the sail’s responsiveness, its maneuverability and its overall functionality. Once again, congratulations to project leader Osamu Mori and the entire IKAROS team!

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1 Comment

  1. A great moment in the history of space!

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In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities. For many years this site coordinated its efforts with the Tau Zero Foundation. It now serves as an independent forum for deep space news and ideas. In the logo above, the leftmost star is Alpha Centauri, a triple system closer than any other star, and a primary target for early interstellar probes. To its right is Beta Centauri (not a part of the Alpha Centauri system), with Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon Crucis, stars in the Southern Cross, visible at the far right (image courtesy of Marco Lorenzi).

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