August 2, 2025
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Breaking News
  • [ August 1, 2025 ] NASA, SpaceX ‘thread the clouds’ to launch Crew-11 to the International Space Station Falcon 9
  • [ July 31, 2025 ] Launch preview: SpaceX, NASA launches Crew-11 following 1-day weather scrub Falcon 9
  • [ July 29, 2025 ] SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Falcon 9
  • [ July 28, 2025 ] SpaceX, NASA conduct static fire test of a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of the Crew-11 launch Falcon 9
  • [ July 26, 2025 ] SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites into a polar orbit Falcon 9

H-2A F30

News

Attitude control failures led to break-up of Japanese astronomy satellite

April 18, 2016 Stephen Clark

Japan’s Hitomi X-ray observatory, beset by an attitude control problem that has disrupted communications since March 29, may have shed one of its power-generating solar panels or deployable telescope in orbit and is spinning too fast to contact ground controllers, officials said.

News

U.S. military rules out collision as cause of Hitomi satellite’s woes

March 29, 2016 Stephen Clark

As Japanese ground controllers struggle to restore communications with a tumbling space telescope in orbit, the U.S. military’s space surveillance experts have eliminated one cause for the satellite’s troubles.

News

Japan’s newest space telescope goes silent

March 27, 2016 Stephen Clark

Japan has lost contact with the newly-launched Hitomi space telescope, and ground observations indicate the satellite has shed debris and may be tumbling in orbit more than 350 miles above Earth.

H-2A

Photos: H-2A rocket soars on groundbreaking astronomy mission

February 19, 2016 Stephen Clark

Burning a mixture of super-cold liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen and pre-packed solid propellant, Japan’s H-2A rocket vaulted into a deep blue evening sky over the beaches of Tanegashima Island on Wednesday with a satellite that will see the surroundings of black holes better than ever before.

H-2A

Black hole observatory launched from Japan

February 17, 2016 Stephen Clark

Japan launched a pioneering observatory with X-ray vision Wednesday to peer into the mysterious, light-starved neighborhoods around black holes and study the genesis of galaxies and other cosmic mega-structures billions of light-years from Earth.

H-2A

Live coverage: H-2A rocket delivers on 30th flight

February 16, 2016 Stephen Clark

Japan’s Astro-H mission, an X-ray astronomy observatory designed to shed light on black holes and the unseen structure of the universe, lifted off aboard an H-2A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center at 0845 GMT (3:45 a.m. EST) Wednesday.

H-2A

Launch of Japanese X-ray observatory postponed

February 11, 2016 Stephen Clark

The Japanese space agency said Thursday the launch of an X-ray astrophysics observatory is postponed from Friday due to a poor weather forecast at the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.

News Headlines

  • NASA, SpaceX ‘thread the clouds’ to launch Crew-11 to the International Space Station
    August 1, 2025
  • Launch preview: SpaceX, NASA launches Crew-11 following 1-day weather scrub
    July 31, 2025
  • SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral
    July 29, 2025
  • SpaceX, NASA conduct static fire test of a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of the Crew-11 launch
    July 28, 2025
  • SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites into a polar orbit
    July 26, 2025
  • Crew-11 astronauts, cosmonaut arrive in Florida ahead of launch to the space station
    July 26, 2025
  • SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral
    July 25, 2025
  • Amazon says $139.5 million investment in Florida is key to ramping up launch cadence with Project Kuiper
    July 24, 2025
  • NASA probes to study how the solar wind triggers potentially dangerous ‘space weather’
    July 23, 2025
  • FAA: ‘Regional power outage’ causes last-minute scrub of NASA’s TRACERS mission
    July 22, 2025
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