Japanese Spacecraft Misses Venus

I feel sorry for them. I miss Venus, too.

JAXA should have asked for help here at CR4! It's too late now.

I love this 'laconic' statement in the Yahoo article: "The craft doesn't have enough fuel to hit the brakes and turn around."

The most likely reason for the failure to insert into orbit is an engine malfunction of some sorts. It could also have been a miss of the 'keyhole' for gravity assist braking, but that is unlikely to have caused a 7 year period for a return to Venus. The craft's relative velocity at arrival would have been some 3000 m/s (plus) faster than orbital speed.

The typical gravity assist braking would only be in the order of 100's of m/s. So I guess that they did hit the keyhole, but then Murphy struck....

-J

"I love this 'laconic' statement in the Yahoo article: "The craft doesn't have enough fuel to hit the brakes and turn around." "

Well, I guess that puts to rest the myth of Japanese vehicles getting such excellent fuel mileage. That little thing couldn't even make it to our nearest neighbor on one tank full!

Maybe they did hit the brakes but the software they got from a certain auto manufacture said no and let it keep on going.

Two miss two planets with 2 shots is really bad....perhaps they have a maths problem (remember the US Mars Laner fiasco?) as well!!!