Japanese satellite filled with 'shooting star' pellets won't spawn artificial meteor shower after all

[Admin]

We'll have to wait another three years or so to see a Japanese company's first big artificial-meteor sky show.

Japanese satellite filled with 'shooting star' pellets won't spawn artificial meteor shower after all : Read more

 

[Robert Lucien Howe]

Hate to say it but this sounds like an astonishing level of incompetence. To plan for a mechanical mechanism in space and not test it in vacuum first. Especially when it is central and critical to your mission. At a guess a vacuum test was omitted to save money..
As so often saving a few bucks now can cost you many times more later.. (Thinks of James Web telescope)

 

[closette]

I'm sure it was tested in vacuo at some level, but I doubt any zero-g flight would allow them to test shooting a pellet at 300 m/s! They are trying out something new here, and I'm sure will learn from this mistake.