Webinar on the Akatsuki Mission of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency with Prof. Takehiko Satoh

The "Venus Climate Orbiter" mission was approved in the spring of 2001, it was later given the Japanese name "Akatsuki", meaning the dawn. Akatsuki is the first "planetary meteorology" mission of which primary target is the Venus' super-rotating atmosphere. To obtain the 3-dimensional views of the atmosphere of Venus, Akatsuki is equipped with 5 cameras, from the ultraviolet (UVI) to the thermal infrared (LIR), plus the ultra-stable oscillator for radio science (RS). Two near-infrared cameras, IR1 and IR2, as well as the lightning/airglow camera (LAC), complete the instrument set. Akatsuki, launched on 21 May 2010, attempted the Venus orbit insertion (VOI-1) on 7 Dec 2010 but failed. After orbiting around the sun for 5 years, it finally became an orbiter around Venus at the second attempt (VOI-R1) on 7 Dec 2015. Akatsuki's unique orbit, near the equatorial plane and the same direction of motion as the Venus' super-rotation, is best suited to study the atmospheric dynamics. The major findings of Akatsuki include "stationary gravity wave features", "equatorial jets in the middle to lower clouds", "sharp and long-lived cloud discontinuity", "global structure of thermal tides", and "importance of thermal tides to the super- rotation". The mission overview and some representative findings by the mission will be presented.

ABOUT PROF. TAKEHIKO SATOH

Takehiko Satoh is Professor at Department of Solar System Sciences, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA). He started his research career as a visiting scientist at the University of Hawaii in 1992, after receiving a PhD from the Science University of Tokyo (SUT). Studies of Jupiter's infrared aurorae opened his way to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (1993-1997), and then to the Frontier Research Center for Computational Sciences, SUT (1997-2001). He has been with Japan's Venus orbiter mission, Akatsuki, since 2001, serving as PI of the IR2 near-infrared camera. He came to the current position at ISAS/JAXA in 2006 and devoted most of his time to the Akatsuki mission. He has also been the Project Scientist of the mission since the summer of 2016.