JAXA had been trying to communicate with the Advanced Land Observing Satellite “DAICHI” (ALOS) for about three weeks after its power generation anomaly on April 22, but we decided to complete its operations by sending a command from the ground to halt its onboard transmitter and batteries at 10:50 a.m. on May 12 (Japan Standard Time) as we found it was impossible to recover communication with the satellite. DAICHI, launched on January 24, 2006 (JST), had been operated for over five years, which was its target life and well beyond its design life of three years, and it achieved many fruitful results related to emergency observations on disaster-stricken areas and earth observations. JAXA continues to investigate the causes of the power generation anomaly. Read More
