Japan gives up on lost X-ray satellite - Free Audiobook

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency says it's going to stop trying to fix the satellite, called Hitomi, which was designed to study X-rays emitted by black holes and other objects in space, after determining two solar arrays had broken off at their bases.

A multi-million-dollar X-ray satellite's lost forever.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency says it's going to stop trying to fix its satellite Hitomi after determining two solar arrays had broken off at their bases.

They lost contact with it at the end of March, just over a month after its launch on February 17th.

Hitomi was designed to study X-rays emitted by black holes and other objects in space, which can't be detected on Earth, because they're blocked by the atmosphere.

On three occasions the agency thought they'd receieved signals from Hitomi, but the frequencies were coming from somewhere else.

Japan's Kyodo News agency says the country spent about 31-billion yen -- 290-million-American-dollars on the project, which NASA invested about 70-million dollars into.