NASA and its Japanese counterpart JAXA will collaborate on the development of an orbiting X-ray astronomy telescope in an effort to replace an astronomy spacecraft that malfunctioned in orbit last year, Space News reported Saturday.
Jeff Foust writes both space agencies plan to begin work on the X-Ray Astronomy Recovery Mission spacecraft this spring as a replacement for the Hitomi astronomy satellite that failed due to a chain of errors in the attitude control system.
“Our deal is to provide the same hardware that we provided last time,” Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said Tuesday during a presentation to the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics of the National Academies.
Hertz added NASA will build a “build-to-print†version of Japan’s Hitomi X-ray spectrometer instrument for the XARM project.
The report said the partnership expects to formally review NASA’s role in the mission by June.
