TOKYO — A recently launched Japanese satellite appears to have broken into pieces after the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) lost regular contact with it on Saturday.
The ASTRO-H satellite was launched on Feb. 17 from the Tanegashima Space Center. It was supposed to be orbiting about 580 kilometers above the Earth's surface but it may have deviated from its path.
The U.S. Joint Space Operation Center reported seeing five objects in the same orbit as ASTRO-H, which has led to the conclusion that the satellite may have broken up. JAXA is investigating the cause of the accident.
The ASTRO-H satellite was equipped with four state of the art instruments, including a hard X-ray imaging system, soft X-ray spectroscopy system, soft X-ray imaging system and soft gamma ray detector.
The instruments could detect cosmic X-rays ranging from 0.3 to 600 kiloelectron volts, which would have helped researchers study extremely energetic processes in the universe such as exploding stars and black holes.
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