NASA Blows Another One

Posted on August 10, 2005 by glasscastle

The coldest instrument ever to fly into space has
unexpectedly lost its liquid helium coolant – rendering it useless. The
mishap occurred just a month after it was launched on a Japanese X-ray
satellite on 10 July 2005.

The instrument, called the X-ray Spectrometer (XRS), was one of three X-ray
detectors to launch aboard Japan’s Astro-E2 mission. The mission has since
been renamed Suzaku.

XRS was to operate at temperatures of just 0.06 kelvin (0.06

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