Japan’s Kounotori 7 Cargo Craft Launched Successfully

September 24, 2018

Tanegashima, Kagoshima Pref.- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, successfully launched the Kounotori 7 unmanned cargo spacecraft in the small hours of Sunday.

The H-2B Launch Vehicle No. 7 carrying the Japanese cargo craft designed to deliver goods to the International Space Station lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan at 2:52 a.m. (5:52 p.m. Saturday GMT). About 15 minutes after the launch, Kounotori 7 was separated from the rocket.

The unmanned craft is slated to come close to the ISS, which is at a point about 400 kilometers above Earth, on Thursday night Japan time. It will then dock with the ISS after being caught by a robotic arm.

Also loaded onto Kounotori 7 is a compact re-entry capsule for collecting experiment samples and bringing them back to Earth. It is the first time for a Kounotori spacecraft to carry such a capsule.

Noting that all Kounotori vehicles have been launched successfully, JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa said at a press conference: "Kounotori is the only cargo spacecraft capable of transporting large and heavy items. We hope to maintain the ability."

Among the goods being transported by Kounotori 7 are foods, drinking water, Japanese-made large lithium-ion batteries to supply electricity to facilities in the ISS and a microsatellite that will be released from Japan's Kibo experimental module at the ISS. The goods weigh about 6.2 tons in total, the heaviest ever for items transported by a Kounotori vehicle.

The re-entry capsule, shaped like a cone, is about 84 centimeters in diameter and 66 centimeters in height. Inside the capsule is a 30-liter vacuum double-layered insulation container developed by major Japanese thermos bottle and rice cooker maker Tiger Corp.

An astronaut at the ISS will put experiment samples in the capsule and attach it onto the outside of Kounotori 7.

While Kounotori 7 is slated to re-enter Earth's atmosphere around early November, the capsule will be detached just before that.

The vehicle will burn up in the atmospheric re-entry, but the capsule is expected to land on water near Minamitorishima, a Pacific island some 1,800 kilometers from Tokyo, using a parachute and will be collected by JAXA.

The H-2B rocket was originally scheduled to be launched on Sept. 11. But the liftoff was postponed four times, due to such reasons as bad weather and a mechanical glitch.

All seven H-2B rockets were used to launch Kounotori vehicles, and all of the launches were conducted successfully.

The launch success rate for H-2 rockets, including the H-2A series, now stands at 97.8 pct. Jiji Press