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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft, whose name means ‘dawn’, gets a second chance to rise on 7 December [nature.com]. Exactly five years after it failed to slip into orbit around Venus, Akatsuki will fire its engines and try again.

The spacecraft has spent the past half-decade orbiting the Sun, on its way to catch up with Venus. “It’s been quite a long period of waiting,” says Masato Nakamura, project manager at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Sagamihara.

Just before 9 a.m. Japan time on 7 December, engineers will command Akatsuki to fire four of its thrusters simultaneously. The engines will run for around 20 minutes, aiming to nudge the spacecraft onto the correct trajectory for capture by Venus’s gravity.
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Akatsuki was launched in May 2010 on a mission to study Venus’s ever-changing atmosphere, which rotates at up to 100 metres per second — much faster than the planetary surface below it. The spacecraft carries five cameras, ranging from infrared to ultraviolet wavelengths to study different atmospheric features, including the lightning thought to flash through Venus’s acidic clouds.

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