by Tokyo (AP) -Japan started a satellite on Sunday to monitor greenhouse gas emissions with its main support H-2A rocket, which has made its last flight before it was replaced by a new flagship that is more competitive on the global space market.
The H-2A rocket successfully resigned from Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan and wore the Gosat GW satellite as part of Tokios Efforts to alleviate climate change. The satellite was released into the orbit about 16 minutes later.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which runs the rocket start and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will later hold a press conference on Sunday to give further details of the flight.
The start on Sunday was the 50th and last flight for the H-2A, which served as Japan’s main support of the main support to bring satellites and probes into space with an almost perfect record since his debut in 2001. After its retirement, it is completely replaced by the H3, which is already in operation, as a new main flagship of Japan.
The start follows several days of delays due to the malfunction of the rocket’s electrical systems.
The Gosat-GW or the global observation satellite for greenhouse gases and water cycle is a third series in the mission to monitor carbon, methane and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It will start to distribute data in about a year, officials said.
The liquid-fuel-H-2A rocket with two solid fuel-sub-rocks developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has had 49 flights with a success record of 98%, with 2003 only failure. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has provided its starting company since 2007.
The H-2A successfully entered Japan’s Moon Lander Slim and a popular Hayabusa2 spaceship in 2014 to reach a distant asteroid that contributes to the country programs in the country.
Japan sees a stable, commercially competitive room transport capacity as a key to its space program and its national security and develops two new flagship rockets as the successor to the H-2A-series-das larger H3 with Mitsubishi and a much smaller epsilone system with the air and space unit of the heavy machine manufacturer IHI. It hopes to meet the different customer needs and to improve its position on the growing market for satellite start.
The H3 should run larger payloads than the H-2A with about half of its starting costs with competitive use worldwide, although civil servants say that more cost reduction efforts are required to achieve better competitiveness in the global market.
After a failed attempted debut in 2023, the H3 took four consecutive successful flights when the rocket had to be destroyed with its payload.
