Japan Successfully Launches Smallest Satellite-Carrying Rocket

February 4, 2018

Kimotsuki, Kagoshima Pref.- The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, successfully launched one of the world's smallest satellite-carrying rockets on Saturday.

The fifth rocket in the SS-520 series released a microsatellite developed by the University of Tokyo into geocentric orbit about seven and a half minutes after the liftoff at the Uchinoura Space Center in Kimotsuki, Kagoshima Prefecture, southwest Japan, at 2:03 p.m. (5:03 a.m. GMT).

In January last year, JAXA launched the fourth SS-520 but failed to receive data from the rocket.

For the 9.5-meter-long fifth launch vehicle, less than one-fifth of the length of Japan's mainstay H-2A rocket, JAXA changed the electrical wiring design to prevent a power cable for its data transmitter from causing short circuit.

"I'm happy and felt relieved," Hiroto Habu, associate professor at JAXA in charge of the development of the rocket, told a news conference.

It was significant that the successful launch showed that Japanese-made commercial off-the-shelf products can be used to make spacecraft, he stressed.

JAXA used such parts to cut launch costs in view of growing demand for microsatellites.

Some 500 million yen was spent to develop the fifth SS-520 rocket, which is capable of lifting a 4-killogram object into low-altitude orbit up to 2,000 kilometers above the ground, according to JAXA.

The microsatellite is designed to photograph the Earth's surface by flying at an altitude of 180-1,500 kilometers and to gather data from ground observation equipment and send them back to the Earth in a bundle.

The rocket and the satellite were both developed at the request of Japan's industry ministry. Jiji Press