Japan – Page 28 – Spaceflight Now

Falcon 9 flight timeline with the JCSAT 14 satellite

May 5, 2016 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral early Friday, heading due east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver the JCSAT 14 communications satellite into orbit 32 minutes later.

Live coverage: Falcon 9 roars into orbit with Japanese satellite

May 5, 2016 Stephen Clark

A Falcon 9 rocket took off for its fourth flight of the year Friday with a middle-of-the-night mission for SKY Perfect JSAT, a Tokyo-based satellite operator. The JCSAT 14 communications satellite launched from Cape Canaveral at 1:21 a.m. EDT (0521 GMT), and the rocket’s first stage booster made a successful landing at sea a few minutes later.

Stormy weather in Florida delays Falcon 9 launch

May 4, 2016 Stephen Clark

SpaceX has delayed a planned Falcon 9 launch with a Japanese communications satellite to Friday due to inclement weather on Florida’s Space Coast.

Hold-down test firing complete for next SpaceX launch

May 2, 2016 Stephen Clark

SpaceX technicians are attaching a Japanese communications satellite to the top of a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of a planned launch Thursday morning from Cape Canaveral.

Commercial Falcon 9 rocket launch scheduled for next week

April 29, 2016 Stephen Clark

SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 rocket launch is set for no earlier than May 5, sources said Friday, with a Japanese television broadcasting satellite heading to orbit from Cape Canaveral.

Japan gives up on rescuing black hole observatory

April 29, 2016 Stephen Clark

Japan’s space agency says it has ceased efforts to rescue a failed X-ray astronomy satellite after it spun out of control and broke apart in orbit, declaring the nearly $400 million mission lost two months after its launch.

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.

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.

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.

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.