A spacecraft built by students has been launched towards another planet for the first time, but it has fallen ominously silent. The toaster-oven-sized cube called UNITEC-1 was launched towards Venus on 20 May [2010]. It hitched a ride on the same rocket that launched a half-tonne Venus orbiter named Akatsuki, which was built by Japan's national space agency. UNITEC-1 was designed and built largely by students, though the project was led by University of Tokyo professor Shinichi Nakasuka. Read more