The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said Aug. 9 that on the previous day, it discovered an anomaly in one of three sets of onboard observation equipment, the X-ray Spectrometer (XRS), on its Suzaku satellite, launched July 10. The XRS was developed in cooperation with NASA and other organizations.

According to JAXA, the XRS is designed to cool down its X-ray micro-calorimeter through freezing to the absolute temperature of -273.09 degreesC for its operations. The freezer is further wrapped by liquid helium and solid neon. On Aug. 8, JAXA discovered that all loaded liquid helium had evaporated, thus making operation of the X-ray micro-calorimeter “very difficult to carry out.” The cause of the anomaly is under investigation.