Japan’s IKAROS mission extended for a year

Science : The team behind Japan’s IKAROS solar sail mission confirmed Wednesday that it completed all the performance tests set for it during its planned 6-month life, writes Dennis Normile for Science. So the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has extended the mission to March 2012. Launched 21 May 2010, IKAROS used centrifugal force to unfurl its sail and relied on the pressure of photons streaming from the Sun for acceleration. While sailing, the craft’s suite of scientific instruments caught gamma-ray bursts, collected data on space dust, and participated in very long baseline interferometry observations of celestial objects.