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Battery fault ends X-ray satellite mission
CARL ZEISS
[MUNICH] Astronomers around the world were last week lamenting the likely loss of Abrixas, a small German-built X-ray satellite whose batteries failed two days after a successful Russian launch.
Some were also suggesting that the failure has raised doubts about the apparently high level of risk associated with so-called smaller, faster, cheaper science missions. These are favoured by space agencies in Europe and the United States as a way of introducing more flexibility into their launch schedules (see Nature 389, 899; 1997).
Abrixas was to have carried out the first complete broad-band all-sky survey with imaging telescopes in the medium-energy X-ray range, extending by an order of magnitude the survey performed by its predecessor ROSAT, which was shut down last year.
Abrixas was seen as a pathfinder for future large international X-ray missions, including the European Space Agencys XMM, the US space agency NASAs AXAF recently renamed the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Japans Astro-E.
Scientists on these missions, each scheduled to be launched within the next nine months, had been hoping to study interesting X-ray sources identified by Abrixas.
But ground contact with the satellite was lost two days after its launch. At least one of its eleven battery cells appears to have been burnt out by inappropriate power input from batteries used to support the launch. This means that, although the scientific instruments seem to be working, the information they gather cannot be transmitted to Earth.
Engineers will be able to analyse the full extent of the damage during a six-day period
Lost in space: but calibration data from the X-ray telescopes on Abrixas may still be useful.