''Suzaku'' (formerly ASTRO-EII) was an X-ray astronomy satellite developed jointly by the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science at

JAXA The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orb ...

and

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...

to probe high energy X-ray sources, such as

supernova explosions A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when a ...

black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...

s and galactic clusters. It was launched on 10 July 2005 aboard the

M-V The M-V rocket, also called M-5 or Mu-5, was a Japanese solid-fuel rocket designed to launch scientific satellites. It was a member of the Mu family of rockets. The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) began developing the M-V in ...

launch vehicle on the M-V-6 mission. After its successful launch, the satellite was renamed ''Suzaku'' after the mythical

Vermilion bird of the South The Vermilion Bird ( zh, c=朱雀, p=Zhūquè) is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. According to Wu Xing, the Taoist five elemental system, it represents the Fire element, the direction south, and the season summer corresp ...

. Just weeks after launch, on 29 July 2005, the first of a series of cooling system malfunctions occurred. These ultimately caused the entire reservoir of liquid helium to boil off into space by 8 August 2005. This effectively shut down the X-ray Spectrometer-2 (XRS-2), which was the spacecraft's primary instrument. The two other instruments, the X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (XIS) and the Hard X-ray Detector (HXD), were unaffected by the malfunction. As a result, another XRS was integrated into the Hitomi X-ray satellite, launched in 2016. On 26 August 2015, JAXA announced that communications with ''Suzaku'' had been intermittent since 1 June 2015, and that the resumption of scientific operations would be difficult to accomplish given the spacecraft's condition. Mission operators decided to complete the mission imminently, as ''Suzaku'' had exceeded its design lifespan by eight years at this point. The mission came to an end on 2 September 2015, when JAXA commanded the radio transmitters on ''Suzaku'' to switch themselves off.

Spacecraft instruments

''Suzaku'' carried high spectroscopic resolution, very wide energy band instruments for detecting signals ranging from soft X-rays up to

gamma-rays A gamma ray, also known as gamma radiation (symbol γ or \gamma), is a penetrating form of electromagnetic radiation arising from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. It consists of the shortest wavelength electromagnetic waves, typically sh ...

(0.3–600 keV). High resolution spectroscopy and wide-band are essential factors to physically investigate high energy astronomical phenomena, such as

s and

supernova A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when ...

. One such feature, the

K-line (x-ray) The K-line is a spectral peak in astronomical spectrometry used, along with the L-line, to observe and describe the light spectrum of stars. The K-line is associated with iron (Fe) and is described as being from emissions at ~6.4keV (thousands ...

, may be key to more direct imaging of black holes. * X-ray Telescope (XRT) * X-ray Spectrometer-2 (XRS-2) * X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (XIS) * Hard X-ray Detector (HXD) ** Uses Gadolinium Silicate crystal (GSO), Gd₂SiO₅(Ce) ** Uses Bismuth Germanate crystal (BGO), Bi₄Ge₃O₁₂ File:ASTRO-EII XRT.JPG, X-ray Telescope (XRT) File:Suzaku HXD.jpg, Hard X-ray Detector (HXD) File:Suzaku XIS.jpg, X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (XIS) File:Suzaku XRS.jpg, X-ray Spectrometer (XRS)

ASTRO-E

''Suzaku'' was a replacement for ASTRO-E, which was lost in a launch failure. The

launch vehicle A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pad, launch pads, supported by a missile launch contro ...

on the M-V-4 mission launched on 10 February 2000 at 01:30:00 UTC but experienced a failure 42 seconds later, failing to achieve orbit and crashing with its payload into the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...

Results

Suzaku discovered "fossil" light from a supernova remnant.Suzaku Finds "Fossil" Fireballs from Supernovae 12.30.09

References

External links

(JAXA)
JAXA/ISAS ''Suzaku'' (ASTRO-EII) mission overview

JAXA report presentation of failure analysis of XRS
(in Japanese) *

NASA/GSFC ''Suzaku'' Learning Center

{{Orbital launches in 2005 X-ray telescopes Space telescopes Satellites of Japan Spacecraft launched in 2005

Spacecraft instruments

ASTRO-E

Results

References

Further reading

External links