Japan launched a new satellite Sunday to reinforce the country’s fleet of orbiting spy platforms charged with monitoring its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific.
A Japanese H-2A launcher blasted off from an idyllic island spaceport Tuesday, dispatching a daring six-year expedition to bring a piece of an asteroid back to Earth.
Weeks after accomplishing the first touchdown on a comet, the team of European scientists that developed the Philae landing craft is awaiting launch of a related robot riding piggyback with Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to achieve the same feat on an asteroid.
Japan is readying an H-2A rocket for liftoff Tuesday to kick off an audacious six-year roundtrip journey to a carbon-rich asteroid, drop a fleet of landers to its surface, collect primordial rock samples, and return the materials to terrestrial laboratories for analysis.
An ambitious mission of exploration launched from Japan at 0422 GMT Wednesday (11:22 p.m. EST Tuesday). An H-2A rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center with Hayabusa 2, starting a six-year journey to collect rocks from an asteroid and return them to Earth.
Poor weather at the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan has grounded until at least Wednesday the launch of a $300 million robotic mission to fly to an asteroid, pick up samples and return them to Earth.
A Japanese weather satellite launched Tuesday aboard an H-2A rocket, beginning a mission to monitor tropical cyclones and storm systems over East Asia and the Western Pacific.
Japan has launched a next-generation geostationary weather satellite on the 25th flight of the country’s H-2A rocket, deploying an upgraded meteorological observatory critical to the minute-by-minute tracking of tropical cyclones and other storm systems across the Asia-Pacific.
A space-based weather monitor, equipped with upgraded instruments for more detailed and timely data on tropical cyclones and thunderstorms, is scheduled for launch Tuesday on top of Japan’s 25th H-2A rocket.