Japanese Satellite, Hitomi, Left Farewell Gift Before Losing Contact

Japan's Hitomi satellite was able to leave Earth with its final gift before its untimely death in March. The satellite had the chance to collect X-ray data from the Perseus galaxy cluster, which allowed scientists to track the movement of emissions from that part of the universe for the first time.

According to a report by redorbit.com, BBC News mentioned that the data published in Nature indicated that hot gases located between galaxies in the Perseus cluster move at a much slower speed (340,000 mph / 540,000 km/h) and is much steadier than what was previously thought.

Hitomi carried an instrument called the Soft X-ray Spectrometer (SXS) that allowed scientists to measure the movement of gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster, just before the mission was lost, The CS Monitor reported.

"For the first time, we have mapped the motion of the X-ray-emitting gas in a cluster of galaxies and determined its velocity structure over a wide range of spatial scales," Richard Kelley, the US principal investigator for the Hitomi collaboration and a researcher at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.

Hitomi, which literally translates to "pupil of the eye" in Japanese, was originally meant to spend its time studying the formation of galaxy clusters and the distortion of space and time around black holes, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). However, the satellite lost its contact soon.

Hngn.com reported that Brian McNamara of the University of Waterloo said that the data received from Hitomi before losing all contact was "exquisite." As much as the team was happy about the kind of information they were to receive, they were also a bit disappointment about the things they would have gotten or the information they did not get.

It was also said that the data retrieved by SXS were so accurate that scientists can now project the mass of the galaxy farther than the Milky Way galaxy.