The is a space launch facility in the

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

ese town of Kimotsuki,

Kagoshima Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands. Kagoshima Prefecture has a population of 1,599,779 (1 January 2020) and has a geographic area of 9,187 km2 (3,547 sq mi). Kagoshima Prefecture borders Kumamoto P ...

. Before the establishment of the

JAXA 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 ...

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 Epsilon (, ; uppercase , lowercase or lunate ; el, έψιλον) is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding phonetically to a mid front unrounded vowel or . In the system of Greek numerals it also has the value five. It was d ...

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 , abbreviated to , is the capital city of Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. Located at the southwestern tip of the island of Kyushu, Kagoshima is the largest city in the prefecture by some margin. It has been nicknamed the "Naples of the Eastern wor ...

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 The was developed by the Avionics and Supersonic Aerodynamics (AVSA) research group in the early days of the Japanese space program. A prominent engineer on the project was Hideo Itokawa was a pioneer of Japanese rocketry, popularly known a ...

, 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 development and larger launch vehicles required a site with more expansive down range than the narrow

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, i ...

. After consideration of various candidate sites, Uchinoura in Kagoshima Prefecture, fronting the Pacific Ocean, was selected. At 31° 15' north latitude and 131° 05' east longitude, and situated in hilly terrain, the site at first glance does not appear to be exceptional; however, landscape engineering resulted in a launch facility which maximizes the unique terrain features of the site. Subsequent to the so-called Baby Rocket, launch vehicles developed by Japan have been given names from the

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 ...

, i.e. Alpha, Beta, Kappa, Omega, Lambda, and Mu. Although some Greek letters have been skipped due to project termination, the progression to Mu has been one of larger and more sophisticated rockets. Launch test efforts at KSC with regard to the

Kappa Kappa (uppercase Κ, lowercase κ or cursive ; el, κάππα, ''káppa'') is the 10th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless velar plosive sound in Ancient and Modern Greek. In the system of Greek numerals, has a value ...

Lambda Lambda (}, ''lám(b)da'') is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiced alveolar lateral approximant . In the system of Greek numerals, lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is derived from the Phoenician Lamed . Lambda gave ri ...

and Lambda-4 rockets set the stage for small satellite missions. At the same time, the Mu program of large rockets was pursued. After four launch failures, an engineering test satellite was successfully put into orbit aboard a Lambda 4S-5 rocket. The satellite Ohsumi (named after a peninsula in Kagoshima Prefecture) marked Japan's first successful satellite launch. Subsequent improvements in the Mu class rocket enabled scientific satellite launches at a rate of one per year. Development of the new generation M-V rocket resulted in successful launch of the scientific satellite MUSES-B ( HALCA) in February 1997. The first launch of the

rocket, of a small scientific satellite SPRINT-A, was performed at 14:00 JST, 14 September 2013.

Launch pads

* Kappa Pad - * Lambda Pad - * Mu Pad - * M-V Pad - * Temporary pad -

References

External links

Uchinoura Space Center

— Encyclopedia Astronautica

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Stratospheric 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 h ...

balloon A balloon is a flexible bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, and air. For special tasks, balloons can be filled with smoke, liquid water, granular media (e.g. sand, flour or rice), or lig ...

launch bases and sites {{Use American English, date=January 2014 Rocket launch sites Space program of Japan Spaceports Buildings and structures in Kagoshima Prefecture

History

Launch pads

See also

References

External links