Japan’s Akatsuki mission to Venus has been declared officially over. Contact with the probe had been lost for some time.
The mission of the Japanese Akatsuki probe — also known as “Venus Climate Orbiter” and managed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) — is officially over. The agency announced that procedures for the operational closure of the probe were initiated on 18 September 2025, after contacts had already been lost for some time and in recent days it was officially declared dead.
Beyond expectations. Akatsuki was launched on May 21, 2010 from the Tanegashima space center (Japan), with the aim of studying the dense atmosphere of Venus — a neighbor of the Earth that has become a real hell in terms of environmental conditions. The first attempt to put it into orbit around Venus, in December 2010, failed due to a malfunction of the main engine. Despite this, JAXA engineers devised an alternative plan, and after five years of waiting, Akatsuki finally managed to insert itself into an orbit around Venus on December 7, 2015.
The mission, initially designed to last about four to five years, went much further: the probe operated for almost a decade around the planet, collecting valuable data and helping to redefine our understanding of the atmosphere. venusiana.
What Akatsuki discovered. The mission achieved numerous results. The main ones are the detailed mapping of the three-dimensional structure of Venus’ atmosphere, thanks to instruments that operate from ultraviolet to infrared. Then he identified a phenomenon known as “super-rotation”: Venusian clouds circulate around the planet at very high speeds, much higher than one might expect considering the slow rotation of the planet itself.
Atmospheric wave. Then there was the discovery of a gigantic standing wave (a “gravity wave”) in the atmosphere of Venus, which extends for thousands of kilometers and suggests a complex interaction between the surface of the planet and the atmosphere. Specifically, it is a huge atmospheric structure, over 10,000 kilometers wide, observed for the first time in December 2015 shortly after the Akatsuki probe managed to enter orbit.
It is a type of atmospheric wave that forms when the flow of gas encounters an obstacle, such as a mountain range. The energy propagates vertically, but the structure remains “still” with respect to the surface: hence the term stationary. Similar phenomena are observed on Earth, for example over the Andes or the Himalayas, but on Venus it is much more extensive and persistent. It was detected in infrared images of the planet’s night side and first described in 2017 in a paper on Nature Geoscience.
Finally, an attempt was made to apply, for the first time, terrestrial meteorological techniques to the atmosphere of another planet.
Mission concluded. JAXA lost contact with Akatsuki around the end of April 2024, during a phase when the probe was in “reduced-accuracy attitude hold mode.” Despite recovery attempts, communication was never re-established. Considering that the probe had largely exceeded its designed mission duration and was already at an advanced stage of its operational life, the agency decided to formally end operations.
What future for the exploration of Venus. With Akatsuki out of commission, no active probes are currently studying Venus. However, new missions are planned: NASA’s DAVINCI+, designed to penetrate the Venusian atmosphere and VERITAS, also from NASA, which will orbit around Venus to study the surface and interior of the planet.
space economy. The NASA budget requested by the White House for 2026 includes a reduction of the order of 24% (from approximately 24.8 billion dollars in 2025 to approximately 18.8 billion for 2026), the two missions are at serious risk of survival. A report from the Center for Naval Analyzes (CNAS) highlights that “the cuts proposed by the Trump budget would decimate NASA’s Venusian science”. However, the US Congress has the final say on the budget. Amendments to defend planetary missions are being moved in various Senate committees.
In any case there would be EnVision from the European Space Agency (ESA), intended to investigate the atmosphere, surface and internal structure of Venus. There would then be a private mission wanted by the space company Rocket Lab in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The name of the project is Venus Life Finder and its objective, among other things, is to send a small probe to the upper part of the Venusian atmosphere (between approximately 48–60 km above the surface) to analyze the presence of organic compounds in the planet’s clouds. The mission, however, was initially scheduled for May 2023, but was then postponed.
