The Tsukuba Space Center (TKSC) also known by its radio

callsign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assi ...

Tsukuba, is the operations facility and headquarters for the

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency 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 o ...

(JAXA) located in Tsukuba Science City in

Ibaraki Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Ibaraki Prefecture has a population of 2,871,199 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Ibaraki Prefecture borders Fukushima Prefecture to the north, Tochigi Prefecture ...

. The facility opened in 1972 and serves as the primary location for Japan's space operations and research programs. Japanese astronauts involved in the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest Modular design, modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos ( ...

are trained in part here in addition to the training they receive at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, in

Houston, Texas Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...

. The complex has several facilities that are used to assemble JAXA's satellites, and the

Japanese Experiment Module Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

for the

. The TKSC offers tours of the facility as well as an exhibit hall which features models of the H-II Transfer Vehicle and a full-sized mock-up of the '' Kibō'' module on the International Space Station.

References

External links

*
TKSC Exhibit Hall
{{Coord, 36, 3, 56.8, N, 140, 7, 47.3, E, source:jawiki_region:JP, display=title Space program of Japan 1972 establishments in Japan Tsukuba, Ibaraki

See also

References

External links