Talk:IKAROS

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is this name derived from the name of the spacecraft 'icarus' in the british space film Sunshine??

That name is taken from the Icarus of Greek mythology. Many space stories take the name Icarus from a cautionary tale and doom their spacecraft from the start....

Also, Icarus is the English version of the Greek Ikaros, so they’re basically the same thing.

According to Space.com, Ikaros is the first solar said to "fly on an interstellar mission."

Why was it reported this way... will Ikaros eventually leave the solar system? Or is the Space.com article simply in error? 71.219.229.95 (talk) 03:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

I would guess that they meant "interplanetary". There have yet to be any probes of any kind (solar sail or no) sent on interstellar missions-- the spacecraft currently on their way out of the solar system have all exceeded their mission lifetimes and will not arrive at another star system for many millenia, and will not be operational when the do. siafu (talk) 21:06, 2 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

True, although the term 'interstellar mission' gets used to describe Voyager 2's exploration of the edge of the solar system, in reference to the interstellar medium / interstellar wind rather than actually visiting other stars. Vultur (talk) 13:16, 8 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

That is because the Voyagers are interstellar probes. They are on an interstellar trajectory that will take them, eventually, well beyond the Sun's influence. Whether a mission is interstellar depends on if its velocity/trajectory allows it to escape the Sun's gravitational field. Of course they'll be long out of power by then and unable to communicate so while the probes are interstellar the mission obviously isn't. Saying that they do carry those famous plaques which could be considered part of their "mission".

The Space.com article is simply an error of jargon, IKAROS is "interplanetary". ChiZeroOne (talk) 23:36, 16 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

According to this page http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/home/IKAROS-blog/?blogid=12 IKAROS reached Venus on December 8, 2010. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.6.247.203 (talk) 16:50, 13 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

The bit in english: "Venus Distance: 0.10AU(14342452km)" suggests it was 14 million km away from Venus.

Can anyone find english versions of the official press releases ? Rod57 (talk) 14:23, 23 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

There is a conspicuous chart (partially in Japanese) in the IKAROS-blog on 12 December 2010[1]. According to the official blog on 10 December 2010[2], the minimun distance was announced to be 80800 km at 16:39(JST) 8 December in Japanese. --Gwano (talk) 03:41, 24 January 2011 (UTC) - added. --Gwano (talk) 03:46, 24 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

"JAXA confirmed that IKAROS is being accelerated by its solar sail." How much? What is the delta-V that is due to the sail (as opposed to the Sun's gravity)? Mcswell (talk) 19:34, 8 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

At what speed is IKAROS traveling?

And how much of this speed comes from the solar sail versus the original speed before it left the other spacecraft?

Is it always accelerating? And if so, by how much? And how fast is it expected to travel in the future?

173.246.35.182 (talk) 16:52, 7 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

P.S. The English on the Official website isn't very good. Can anyone translate so we can add more material to the Wikipedia article?

Thanks for any help,

173.246.35.182 (talk) 17:51, 7 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

The sail's thrust was 1.1 mN and velocity shift for 5 months got to 100 m/s [3]. Japanese PDF of the official site[4] contains some graphs. From right graph in page 9, it seems to be always accelerated (and reached 100 m/s on November). From center graph in page 10, IKAROS got a little gravity assist from the Venus. I couldn't find absolute velocity of IKAROS, but the speed will not differ from someting else orbiting Earth-Venus transfer heliocentric orbit very much.--Gwano (talk) 14:56, 10 April 2011 (UTC) - Fix mistake (underline) --Gwano (talk) 11:00, 12 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the help!

Is 100 m/s miles per second or meters per second?

Appreciatively,

Telemachus.forward (talk) 23:16, 11 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

It's very rare for Japanese to use miles. That should be meters per second. --Gwano (talk) 11:00, 12 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

Using the blog to estimate speed

I did a quick calculation based on two blog entries:

• Nov 22nd Entry [5]
• Dec 3rd Entry [6]

On Nov 22, the distance from Earth was reported as 206480857 km. On Dec 3, the distance from Earth was reported as 216897056 km.

That's a distance of 10416199 km [7] in approximately 11 days, or an equivalent speed of 10.9598053 km per second [8].

Of course, IKAROS is not travelling directly away from Earth, so some trigonometry could be used to determine how much faster than this IKAROS is going, but at these distances and with so much error in the time component (exactly 11 days?) it's probably not worth it for this rough estimate.

For comparison, Voyager 1 is traveling at about 17 km/s. [9]

173.164.127.101 (talk) 18:36, 6 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Is IKAROS already broken? I can't find any news about IKAROS after venus flyby at Dec, 2010. I don't think this is normal for IKAROS because which should have more flyby to nearby planet soon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.73.89.188 (talk) 13:50, 30 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

http://www.jspec.jaxa.jp/ikaros_channel/e/ has some recent news about radio contact from July 4, if Google Translate is reliable. The news from June 20 appears to indicate the spacecraft has been in hibernation due to insufficient insolation and the team was recently making contact attempts, but we'd need a Japanese reader to really be sure of the details. -84user (talk) 23:34, 13 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Can anybody supply information about the orbit of IKAROS? Obviously the solar sail has an effect on the orbit of the spacecraft, so it is more than gravitiy ("Newton") at work here. But are there estimatess for perihelion, aphelion and orbital period of IKAROS (2010-020E)? And if anybody could find the "initial" trajectory (without the effect of the solar sail), the delta-v it has collected (and so on) this would be great. Tony Mach (talk) 14:37, 25 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'm also very interested in that, as well as the orientation of the spacecraft and how that changes over time, and how they controled it. I looked on the JPL Horizons On-Line Ephemeris System but couldn't find it there, which was surprising. But there is a lot of information at IKAROS - eoPortal Directory - Satellite Missions ★NealMcB★ (talk) 13:29, 5 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Please don't give meters per second. Only scientists or engineers can understand that. How many kilometers per hour, or miles per hour? Also, where is it now? Many thanks for any help.2602:306:BDA0:97A0:466D:57FF:FE90:AC45 (talk) 08:07, 19 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

On the contrary, any high school kid who passes his general science class should easily be able to do that calculation - not just professionals. 50.111.1.232 (talk) 15:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Venus Image Taken by IKAROS Solar Sail.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 14:36, 24 January 2019 (UTC)Reply

So, where is it?

Is it orbiting anything or just floating around in space?

Any communications since 2015?

For such an ambitious project, am rather surprised at lack of post-2015 info and follow-up/through.

Even the current locations of the extremely old Voyager spacecrafts are known and there are still the occasional news releases about them. 2600:8800:785:9400:C23F:D5FF:FEC4:D51D (talk) 03:22, 8 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

No, it's not "floating around" in space - it is on a trajectory. One doesn't bring a 10 km/sec craft to a dead stop without a whole helluva lotta work (in the physics sense.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.111.1.232 (talk) 15:14, 8 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

It's just weird that we haven't heard much about it, which is why I'm echoing what the IP said. For something as ambitious as this, you would think there would be more media coverage. Viriditas (talk) 09:15, 8 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

the section titled "Purpose" includes several references to an illustration that is not included, starting with "(comments in parentheses refer to figure):" – either the figure needs to be added or those references should be removed ManlyMatt (talk) 07:28, 8 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I suppose the "figure" in that section refers to the File:Ikaros solar sail key numbered bottom line.svg, currently located in the "Design" section, although the Infobox template is taking large space and the figure is pushed down (in my browser rendering, at least). --Fukumoto (talk) 16:42, 8 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Article (8 December 2025) says IKAROS deployed on 14 July 2010, and then on 9 July 2010 it “was being accelerated by its solar sail.” Perhaps the first of these two dates should be “4” instead of “14”, or the second date should be “19” instead of “9”.

Peter Delmonte (talk) 18:58, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply