Japan Successfully Launches Earth Observation Satellite

Tokyo, Jan. 24 (Jiji Press)–Japan successfully launched an earth observation satellite on an H-2A rocket Tuesday morning.

The No. 8 H-2A rocket carrying the 4-ton satellite called Daichi, one of the world’s biggest such satellites, lifted off at 10:33 a.m. (1:33 a.m. GMT) from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tanegashima Space Center in southern Kagoshima Prefecture.

The Daichi was separated from the rocket about 16 minutes after the liftoff and is going into orbit some 700 kilometers above the earth for land observation, disaster monitoring, mapping, and resource surveying.

Equipped with both optical sensors and a radar, the satellite is capable of making day-and-night and all-weather observations and sensing objects on the earth as small as 2.5 meters by 2.5 meters.

JAXA, which has spent about 70.4 billion yen for the launch, hopes that the Daichi will complete its three-year life. The Daichi’s predecessors–the Midori and Midori II–stopped operating 10 months after their launch, because of solar cell panel troubles.

The agency plans to launch two more satellites this month–the Multifunctional Transport Satellite 2 on an H-2A rocket, and the ASTRO-F infrared imaging surveyor on an M-5 rocket.END