A cutting-edge X-ray telescope that was lofted into space earlier this year by the Japanese space agency, JAXA, has been officially pronounced dead.

Canada was a key partner in the orbiting observatory, known as Astro-H and later dubbed Hitomi after its Feb. 17 launch.

In a statement released on Thursday, JAXA said its analyses confirm that the telescope has separated from its two large solar arrays, depriving it of power. The agency has concluded that Astro-H cannot be recovered and will now focus on investigating the critical failure that doomed its mission.

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Flight engineers were in the midst of several weeks of testing and monitoring the telescope's various systems in advance of its first science run when it failed to respond during a scheduled communication window with mission control on March 26. Soon after, amateur satellite watchers reported that the space telescope appeared to have shed several large pieces.

It now appears that problems with a star tracker, which was designed to keep the 12-metre-long telescope properly oriented, instead caused it to spin out of control. As the satellite's rate of rotation increased, its solar panels likely broke off at their bases.

Canada's contribution to the project was a sophisticated laser system built by Neptec Design Group of Ottawa that was needed to keep careful track of the telescope's sensitive detectors in relation to the incoming X-rays, allowing the telescope to study a wide range of high-temperature phenomena in the universe with unprecedented precision.

Stéphane Desjardins, acting director for space exploration development at the Canadian Space Agency, said that prior to the telescope's demise, the system was working well and meeting its stringent requirements.

"Every technology we develop for space gives us an opportunity to apply the same technology to future missions," he said.

He added that the Astro-H collaboration had gone very well from Canada's perspective, although no further projects with JAXA are in the works at present. Canada has other astronomical hardware in space, including an ultraviolet imager on a satellite launched by India last September. It is also a partner in the enormous James Webb Space Telescope that NASA plans to launch in 2018.

The loss of Astro-H means that Canadian researchers will not be able to proceed with planned observations of black holes and other exotic objects. Nevertheless, participation in the project was a hugely positive experience, said Luigi Gallo, an astronomer at St. Mary's University in Halifax and Canadian principal investigator for Astro-H.

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"We were involved in all aspects of the mission and that is not typical," he said.