News:Japan waits on Venus spacecraft

Japan's space agency (Jaxa) is working to establish the status of its Akatsuki mission to Venus.

The spacecraft fired its main engine just before midnight GMT on Monday in a manoeuvre designed to allow the planet's gravity to capture the probe.

Akatsuki then briefly lost contact with Earth as it moved behind the Venus.

Scientists said they would know later on Tuesday whether the operation to insert the satellite into the correct orbit had been successful or not.

Akatsuki was launched to the inner-world by an H-IIA rocket in May. Its goals include finding definitive evidence for lightning and for active volcanoes.

It will not be alone at Venus; the European Space Agency's Venus Express craft arrived at the planet in 2006. The pair are due to conduct joint observations.

Venus is almost identical in size to our planet, and is thought to have a similar composition. But there the resemblance ends.
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AKATSUKI ('DAWN') VENUS ORBITER
Akatsuki (Jaxa)

* Will study atmosphere and surface
* Size: 1.0m by 1.4m by 1.4m
* Mass at lift-off: About 500kg
* 5 cameras; 1 radio experiment
* Designed for 4.5-year life
* Will sit in 300km by 80,000km orbit

The thick Venusian atmosphere is opaque to instruments that operate at visible wavelengths and so the Japanese probe carries five cameras that are sensitive in the infrared and ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
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