After 15 years in space, a Japanese spacecraft has completed its mission. It famously carried more than 13,000 messages and drawings from fans of the virtual singer Hatsune Miku.
On September 18th, Japan’s space agency, JAXA, announced the end of operations for its Venus orbiter, Akatsuki.
After losing communication in April 2024 due to a problem with its positioning system, attempts to reconnect with the spacecraft were unsuccessful. Because the probe had already operated far longer than anticipated, the Japanese space agency, JAXA, has now ended the mission.
JAXA announced the news on X (formerly Twitter), expressing gratitude to everyone who supported the mission over the past 15 years.
[Press Release]
Venus Climate Orbiter “AKATSUKI” Operation Completed#JAXA— JAXA(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) (@JAXA_en) September 18, 2025
Akatsuki, Japan’s first spacecraft to orbit another planet, lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center on May 21, 2010, using an H-IIA rocket. Before its launch, JAXA asked people to send letters and drawings that would be sent to Venus.
As a huge Miku fan, I was so excited to hear about the ‘Send Miku to Space’ project! It was amazing to see the community come together and send thousands of messages and drawings of Miku – all printed on metal plates – with the space probe. It felt like we were really sending a piece of our love for her into the universe!
Shortly after being launched, the Akatsuki spacecraft experienced an engine problem, leaving it stranded in space for five years. Engineers were eventually able to regain control using a small backup thruster, and it finally reached Venus in December 2015. Over the next eight years, Akatsuki studied the planet’s atmosphere.
Throughout its mission, Akatsuki significantly advanced our knowledge of planets. It achieved several breakthroughs, including the discovery of the largest, stable gravity waves in our solar system, a better understanding of Venus’s unusually fast atmospheric rotation, and the first-ever use of Earth-based data analysis methods on another planet.
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2025-09-23 14:19