Details were now shared on the proximate causes of the spacecraft’s loss, highlighting that Hitomi’s fate was sealed by the deliberate disabling of safety systems, a willingness to accept operational risk and a lack of operational protocols for a major change on the spacecraft’s thruster system.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency has officially declared the Hitomi X-Ray Observatory lost and ceased all attempts to communicate with the stricken spacecraft, marking the untimely end of a mission that promised a great scientific return in the field of high-energy astrophysics.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency pieced together a rough timeline of the events sending the agency’s Hitomi spacecraft into an uncontrolled tumble, causing the spacecraft to break up.