Japanese Satellite Hitomi Sent Galactic Wind Data Before Disappearance

In February, the Japanese sent the Hitomi X-ray telescope 360 miles from Earth to peer into space in search for the most powerful objects in the universe - black holes and supernovae.

However, just one month after its launch, the telescope vanished - with the ground crew losing contact it was feared to have been broken apart. Still not all is lost. According to The Daily Mail, the satellite was able to send back data just before it disappeared, revealing a calm gas cloud in a cluster of galaxies in the Perseus constellation.

The data that was sent back by the satellite indicated that swirls of hot gas between the Perseus galaxies may not be as turbulent as expected - the superheated gas or plasma is moving at 366,858 miles per hour: fast, but relatively slow compared to what they expected.

Andrew Fabian, member of the Hitomi Team and lead author of the spacecraft findings shared, "We're not just looking at some little fluffy atmosphere, there's nothing like it."

It seems that he's right, though: the new map, as noted by New Scientist-, showed large gusts of plasma - some even larger than our very own Milky Way.

Within the enormous central galaxy is an active black hole that is generating jets of plasma particles that is said to have been accelerating close to the speed of light. Upon hitting cooler gas, the jets then blow bubbles which rise out of the cluster despite gravity.

Beyond this, however, the data from the probe should also help us understand how heavier elements are formed inside supernovae, and how they have spread throughout the universe over aeons.

After Hitomi's failure in collecting more data, The Verge mentioned that the next mission that will use similar detectors would be ATHENA, which is an observatory that the European Space Agency is planning to launch in 2028, and the X-ray Surveyor, a mission concept that is yet being proposed to NASA.