Uchinoura Space Center
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Uchinoura Space Center
The is a space launch facility in the Japanese town of Kimotsuki, Kagoshima Prefecture. Before the establishment of the JAXA space agency in 2003, it was simply called the (KSC). All of Japan's scientific satellites were launched from Uchinoura prior to the M-V launch vehicles being decommissioned in 2006. It continues to be used for suborbital launches, and has also been used for the Epsilon orbital launch vehicle. Additionally, the center has antennas for communication with interplanetary space probes. History Established in February 1962, the Kagoshima Space Center (KSC) was constructed on the Pacific coast of Kagoshima Prefecture in Uchinoura (now part of Kimotsuki) for the purpose of launching large rockets with probe payloads. Prior to establishment of KSC, test launches of the Pencil Rocket, Baby Rocket and Kappa Rocket had been performed at the pioneering Akita rocket test facility ( Michikawa) from the mid-1950s to the 1960s. However, progress in rocket developm ...
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M-V With Astro-E Satellite
The M-V rocket, also called M-5 or Mu-5, was a Japanese solid-fuel rocket designed to launch scientific satellites. It was a member of the Mu family of rockets. The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) began developing the M-V in 1990 at a cost of 15 billion yen. It has three stages and is high, in diameter, and weighs about . It was capable of launching a satellite weighing into an orbit as high as . The first M-V rocket launched the HALCA radio astronomy satellite in 1997, and the second the Nozomi Mars explorer in July 1998. The third rocket attempted to launch the Astro-E X-ray satellite on 10 February 2000 but failed. ISAS recovered from this setback and launched Hayabusa to 25143 Itokawa in 2003. The following M-V launch was the scientific Astro-E2 satellite, a replacement for Astro-E, which took place on 10 July 2005. The final launch was that of the Hinode (SOLAR-B) spacecraft, along with the SSSat microsat and a nanosatellite, HIT-SAT, on 22 Septe ...
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Greek Alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic Greece, Archaic and early Classical Greece, Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in Archaic Greek alphabets, many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BCE, the Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard and it is this version that is still used for Greek writing today. The letter case, uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are: : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , /ς, , , , , , . The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of the Latin script, Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter; it developed the letter case distinction between uppercase and lowercase in parallel with Latin ...
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Space Program Of Japan
The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orbit, and is involved in many more advanced missions such as asteroid exploration and possible human exploration of the Moon. Its motto is ''One JAXA'' and its corporate slogan is ''Explore to Realize'' (formerly ''Reaching for the skies, exploring space''). History On 1 October 2003, three organizations were merged to form the new JAXA: Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL), and National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). JAXA was formed as an Independent Administrative Institution administered by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC). Before the merger, ISAS w ...
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Rocket Launch Sites
This article constitutes a list of rocket launch sites. Some of these sites are known as spaceports or cosmodromes. A single rocket launch is sufficient for inclusion in the table, as long as the site is properly documented through a reference. Missile locations with no launches are not included in the list. Proposed and planned sites and sites under construction are not included in the main tabulation, but may appear in condensed lists under the tables. A shorter list of spaceports for human spaceflight and satellite launches is available in the article Spaceport. Table specification Sorting order * Countries in alphabetical order within a table * Launch sites within a country are sorted chronologically according to start of operations Column specification * Country – territory of the site (the organisation responsible for the launches may reside elsewhere, as indicated in the notes column; * Location – Name of launch site (sometimes also province etc.) * Coordinates – ge ...
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Balloon (aircraft)
In aeronautics, a balloon is an unpowered aerostat, which remains aloft or floats due to its buoyancy. A balloon may be free, moving with the wind, or tethered to a fixed point. It is distinct from an airship, which is a powered aerostat that can propel itself through the air in a controlled manner. Many balloons have a basket, gondola, or capsule suspended beneath the main envelope for carrying people or equipment (including cameras and telescopes, and flight-control mechanisms). Principles A balloon is conceptually the simplest of all flying machines. The balloon is a fabric envelope filled with a gas that is lighter than the surrounding atmosphere. As the entire balloon is less dense than its surroundings, it rises, taking along with it a basket, attached underneath, which carries passengers or payload. Although a balloon has no propulsion system, a degree of directional control is possible through making the balloon rise or sink in altitude to find favorable wind direc ...
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Stratosphere
The stratosphere () is the second layer of the atmosphere of the Earth, located above the troposphere and below the mesosphere. The stratosphere is an atmospheric layer composed of stratified temperature layers, with the warm layers of air high in the sky and the cool layers of air in the low sky, close to the planetary surface of the Earth. The increase of temperature with altitude is a result of the absorption of the Sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation by the ozone layer. The temperature inversion is in contrast to the troposphere, near the Earth's surface, where temperature decreases with altitude. Between the troposphere and stratosphere is the tropopause border that demarcates the beginning of the temperature inversion. Near the equator, the lower edge of the stratosphere is as high as , at midlatitudes around , and at the poles about . Temperatures range from an average of near the tropopause to an average of near the mesosphere. Stratospheric temperatures also vary w ...
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HALCA
HALCA (Highly Advanced Laboratory for Communications and Astronomy), also known for its project name VSOP (VLBI Space Observatory Programme), the code name MUSES-B (for the second of the Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft series), or just Haruka (はるか) was a Japanese 8 meter diameter radio telescope satellite which was used for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). It was the first such space-borne dedicated VLBI mission. History It was placed in a highly elliptical orbit with an apogee altitude of 21,400 km and a perigee altitude of 560 km, with an orbital period of approximately 6.3 hours. This orbit allowed imaging of celestial radio sources by the satellite in conjunction with an array of ground-based radio telescopes, such that both good (u,v) plane coverage and very high resolution were obtained. Although designed to observe in three frequency bands: 1.6 GHz, 5.0 GHz, and 22 GHz, it was found that the sensitivity of the 22 GHz band had ...
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Ohsumi (satellite)
Ōsumi (or Ohsumi, おおすみ) is the first Japanese satellite put into orbit. It was launched on February 11, 1970 at 04:25 UTC with a Lambda 4S-5 rocket from Uchinoura Space Center by Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science, University of Tokyo, now part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Japan became the fourth nation after the USSR, United States and France to release an artificial satellite into successful orbit on its own. The satellite is named after the Ōsumi Peninsula in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, where the launch site is located. See also * Timeline of artificial satellites and space probes This Timeline of artificial satellites and Space probe A space probe is an artificial satellite that travels through space to collect scientific data. A space probe may orbit Earth; approach the Moon; travel through interplanetary space; flyby ... References External links Kiwi-Osumi-image Satellites formerly orbiting Earth Satellites of J ...
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Mu (rocket Family)
The Mu, also known as M, was a series of Japanese solid-fueled carrier rockets, which were launched from Uchinoura between 1966 and 2006. Originally developed by Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Mu rockets were later operated by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency following ISAS becoming part of it. Early Japanese carrier rockets The first Mu rocket, the Mu-1 made a single, sub-orbital, test flight, on 31 October 1966. Subsequently, a series of rockets were produced, designated Mu-3 and Mu-4. In 1969 a suborbital test launch of the Mu-3D was conducted. The first orbital launch attempt for the Mu family, using a Mu-4S, was conducted on 25 September 1970, however the fourth stage did not ignite, and the rocket failed to reach orbit. On 16 February 1971, Tansei 1 was launched by another Mu-4S rocket. Two further Mu-4S launches took place during 1971 and 1972. The Mu-4S was replaced by the Mu-3C, was launched four times between 1974 and 1979, with three success ...
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Lambda (rocket Family)
Lambda is the name of a series of Japanese carrier rockets. It consisted of the types Lambda 2, LS-A, LSC-3, Lambda 3, Lambda 4 and LS-C, developed jointly by Institute of Industrial Science of University of Tokyo, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of Tokyo University, and Prince Motor Company, which merged with Nissan in 1966. On February 11, 1970, the first Japanese satellite Ohsumi was launched using a Lambda 4 rocket. Lambda series rockets did not have guidance systems, as they had the potential to be converted for offensive military use, thus interpreted as a violation of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. However, future Japanese launch vehicles, such as the H-II, were allowed to have guidance systems. The Lambda 4 was launched nine times, though five were failures. The first launch of the Lambda 4S rocket took place on September 26, 1966, from Kagoshima , abbreviated to , is the capital city of Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. Located at the southwestern t ...
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Kappa (rocket)
Kappa is a family of solid-fuel Japanese sounding rockets, which were built starting from 1956. Rockets Kappa 1 * Ceiling: 40 km * Takeoff thrust: 10.00 kN * Diameter: 0.13 m * Length: 2.70 m Kappa 2 * Ceiling: 40 km * Mass: 300 kg * Diameter: 0.22 m * Length: 5 m Kappa 6 (in two stages) * Pay load: 20 kg * Ceiling: 60 km * Takeoff weight: 270 kg * Diameter: 0.25 m * Length: 5.61 m Kappa 7 * Ceiling: 50 km * Diameter: 0.42 m * Length: 8.70 m Kappa 8 (in two stages) * Pay load: 50 kg * Ceiling: 160 km * Takeoff weight: 1500 kg * Diameter: 0.42 m * Length: 10.90 m Kappa 4 * Ceiling: 80 km * Takeoff thrust: 105.00 kN * Diameter: 0.33 m * Length: 5.90 m Kappa 9L * Pay load: 15 kg * Ceiling: 350 km * Takeoff weight: 1550 kg * Diameter: 0.42 m * Length: 12.50 m Kappa 9M * Pay load: 50 kg * Ceiling: 350 km * Mass: 1500 kg * Diameter: 0.42 m * Length: 11.10 m Kappa 8L * Pay load: ...
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