Latest Japanese space program Stories
WALLOPS ISLAND, Va., March 15, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA has rescheduled the launch of five suborbital sounding rockets from the Wallops Facility in Virginia as part of a study of the upper level jet stream to no earlier than the night of Saturday, March 17. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The high probability of unacceptable weather is preventing a launch attempt on March 16. The Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX) will gather...
Japanese researchers discovered while studying grains of dust from the Itokawa asteroid that tiny particles of space dust bombard asteroids and give them their shape. The researchers analyzed the size, mineralogy, shape and geochemistry of five dust grains recovered by the Japanese asteroid probe Hayabusa. Hayabusa succeeded in returning over 1,500 grains of dust from the asteroid Itokawa when it parachuted into the Australian outback in June 2010. "Our findings show the landscape...
[ Watch the Video ] NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has revealed that the surface of the moon is actually being stretched. Researchers said the moon's surface is forming minute valleys in some small areas on the lunar surface. They believe this activity occurred less than 50 million years ago, making it recent activity when considering the moon is over 4.5 billion years old. The team studied high-resolution images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC)...
Cyclone Giovanna made landfall in eastern Madagascar very early on February 14 and continues tracking in a southwestern direction toward the Mozambique Channel. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image when Giovanna's center was close to the capital city of Antananarivo, and NASA's TRMM satellite saw powerful towering thunderstorms around its center before it made landfall. According to BBC News, Giovanna made landfall near the eastern port city of Toamasina with winds gusting to 120 mph...
GREENBELT, Md., Feb. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Japanese scientists and engineers have completed construction on a new instrument designed to take 3-D measurements of the shapes, sizes and other physical characteristics of both raindrops and snowflakes. The instrument will be shipped from Japan to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., to be integrated into an upcoming NASA Earth science satellite. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)...
Powerful Cyclone Funso's eye has been clear in NASA satellite imagery over the last several days until NASA's Aqua satellite noticed it had "closed" and become filled with high clouds on January 27. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Cyclone Funso on January 27 at 0730 UTC (2:30 a.m. EST). The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured a true color image of the storm that showed Funso's eye has now filled with clouds and appears ragged. Despite being...
Beginning Jan. 17, NASA will fly an airborne science laboratory above Canadian snowstorms to tackle a difficult challenge facing the upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite mission -- measuring snowfall from space. GPM is an international satellite mission that will set a new standard for precipitation measurements from space, providing next-generation observations of worldwide rain and snow every three hours. It is also the first mission designed to detect falling snow...
NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite was providing forecasters with the rate in which rainfall was occurring in Tropical Storm Washi over the last week, and now TRMM data has been compiled to show rainfall totals over the devastated Philippines. Washi, known locally in the Philippines as Sendong, began as a tropical depression on December 13, 2011 in the West Pacific Ocean about 2150 km (~1333 miles) due east of the southern Philippines. Washi only intensified...
Officials said that the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a new spy satellite into orbit on Monday. The satellite launched aboard a Japanese H-2A rocket at 10:21 a.m. from the Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan. JAXA said the radar satellite successfully separated from its rocket and was in orbit just 20 minutes after it was launched. The information-gathering satellite was built due to concerns over North Korea's missile program and also to help monitor...
NASA's TRMM satellite passed over Tropical Storm Alenga and noticed that the rainfall has intensified in the storm in the last two days indicating that it continues strengthening. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite called TRMM again passed over intensifying tropical storm Alenga in the South Indian Ocean on December 5, 2011 at 2103 UTC (6:03 p.m. EST). As expected, Alenga had become better organized with TRMM's Precipitation Radar (PR) seeing scattered bands of heavy...
