Encouragement from space for Japan

Posted By Emily Lakdawalla

2011/03/22 11:05 CDT

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I saw this posted by @Akatsuki_JAXA (the Akatsuki Venus mission's official Twitter identity) and thought it was cute so I'm sharing it here. Thanks to translation help from Twitter I can tell you that it shows Japan's spacecraft offering encouragement to the people in their quake- and tsunami-struck homeland. A literal translation of the text, by @kazenoiro: "Everybody in Japan! Do your best. Help each other," and "We continue to send our heart (cheer and pray) from space." A looser translation, from @hee913758: "Everyone in Japan, pull together! Our hearts go out to you all." In the cartoon are IKAROS and its deployed cameras DCAM-1 and DCAM-2; Hayabusa and its mini-lander MINERVA; Akatsuki; and the Michibiki global positioning satellite. I love these cartoony Twitter identities from which JAXA's spacecraft interact with their fans; each has been imbued with a unique personality and style.