Latest Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Stories

When Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide launches spaceward aboard NASA's shuttle Discovery on Saturday, he will help carry his country's hopes - literally - into orbit. Hoshide and six crewmates are preparing to haul Japan's $1 billion laboratory Kibo (which means "Hope" in Japanese) to the International Space Station. The module, a massive orbital room the size of a large tour bus, will be the station's largest laboratory once installed. "It's going to be a great mission...

HOUSTON - When visiting someone's house - even in space - bring food. That was Japanese astronaut Takao Doi's motto and his country's orbital eats are apparently a hit aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Doi, a veteran spaceflyer who is helping deliver the first segment of Japan's massive Kibo laboratory to the ISS, packed three types of Japanese noodles, some salmon and steamed rice for his crewmates aboard the shuttle Endeavour and space station. "Actually, the...

A Japanese space probe named Selene, or Kaguya in Japanese, has sent back breathtaking high-definition video of the Moon's surface.The probe arrived at the moon last year with a large onboard HDTV camera to capture footage of the lunar surface from 62 miles overhead. The footage was unveiled at this week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas.   The video provides the spectacular imagery of the landscape seen decades ago by the Apollo astronauts as they approached...

The European Space Agency (ESA) signaled the start of a busy period for the planet Mercury, when it signed the contract for industrial development to start for the BepiColombo mission today (18th January 2008) at Astrium in Friedrichshafen, Germany. UK scientists and industry have key roles in BepiColombo, including construction of spacecraft subsystems and science instrument design.BepiColombo, a mission to make the most comprehensive study of Mercury ever, is due for launch in August...

Earth: water planet. Oceans, rivers, aquifers, rain: these and many other features describe the hydrologic anatomy of Earth's thin, life-supporting layers of upper crust and lower atmosphere. How it works"”that is, how water circulates, behaves, and interacts is much harder to determine. That's why there's TRMM, and this year NASA celebrates the tenth anniversary of this one-of-a-kind spacecraft. Built in cooperation with the Japanese Space agency JAXA, The Tropical Rainfall Measuring...

The first steps of the next great phase of European space science have been taken! At its meeting held on 17-18 October 2007 in Paris, ESA's Space Science Advisory Committee (SSAC) selected the new candidates for possible future scientific missions."It has been an arduous process both inside ESA and in the community to get these winning groups into what I suppose can be said to be the quarterfinals of one of the ultimate competitions in world space science," said ESA's Director of...

TOKYO -- Japan put its first satellite into orbit around the moon Friday, placing the country a step ahead of China and India in an increasingly heated space race in Asia.The probe was set into lunar orbit after completing a complicated navigational maneuver late Thursday, space agency officials said. The probe will gradually move into orbit closer to the surface to the moon before conducting a yearlong observational mission."We believe this is a big step," said project manager...

Cleanup and rebuilding teams responding to the devastation across Greece caused by this summer's deadly fires are getting help from space. A series of crisis map products based on satellite acquisitions of affected areas are being provided to aid damage assessment efforts following the activation of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters.More than 60 people were killed and thousands left homeless in the worst forest fires to hit Greece in decades. According to data from ESA's...

JAXA's first large lunar explorer, Kaguya (formerly Selene), launched on September 14, is adding a new mission to the story of lunar exploration.Originally planned to launch on 13 September, its launch is rescheduled for 14 September 2007, 3:31:01 am CEST, due to weather conditions. Kaguya will be launched on board a Japanese H-II A rocket, from the Tanegashima space centre in Japan. The objectives of the mission are to understand the Moon's origin and evolution, and to survey it for future...

The space-borne infrared observatory AKARI, observed asteroid Itokawa last month with its Infrared Camera. The data will be used to refine estimates of sizes of potentially hazardous asteroids in the future.The data collected by AKARI, a JAXA mission with ESA participation, complements that from JAXA's asteroid explorer Hayabusa in late April this year. As AKARI observed Itokawa on 26 July it was in the constellation of Scorpius, and was about 19 magnitudes bright in visible light. The...