Japan's brand new space telescope project has come to an early end.

 

日本崭新的太空望远镜计划宣告提前终结。

 

Japan's space agency on Thursday announced that they would stop attempting to communicate with the ASTRO-H space observatory¹ after it was found that the telescope cannot recover from a failure that began in March.

 

The observatory, designed to study far-off objects like black holes and exploding stars in extreme detail, was launched on February 17, and was expected to have a long and healthy observational life in space.

 

Japan's space agency started experiencing communications problems with ASTRO-H on March 26. 

 

Since that time, agency officials have been attempting to regain² control of the observatory, which was thought to be spinning out of control in its orbit.

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