Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS), also called Daichi (a Japanese word meaning "land"), was a 3810 kg Japanese

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

launched in 2006. After five years of service, the satellite lost power and ceased communication with Earth, but remains in orbit.

Launch

ALOS was launched from

Tanegashima is one of the Ōsumi Islands belonging to Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The island, in area, is the second largest of the Ōsumi Islands, and has a population of 33,000 people. Access to the island is by ferry, or by air to New Tanegashima Airp ...

, Japan, on 24 January 2006 by

H-IIA H-IIA (H-2A) is an active expendable launch system operated by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. These liquid fuel rockets have been used to launch satellites into geostationary orbit; lunar orbi ...

No. 8. The launch had been delayed three times by weather and sensor problems.

Mission

The satellite contained three sensors that were used for cartography and disaster monitoring of

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

and the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (

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 ...

) initially hoped to be able to launch the successor to ALOS during 2011, but this plan did not materialize. In 2008, it was announced that the images generated by ALOS were too blurry to be of any use for map making. Only 52 of 4,300 images of Japan could be updated based on data from ALOS. Then, JAXA announced the problem was solved. ALOS was used to analyze several disaster sites. Images of the devastated Japanese coast following the

2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami On 11 March 2011, at 14:46:24 Japan Standard Time, JST (05:46:24 UTC), a 9.0–9.1 Submarine earthquake, undersea megathrust earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region. It lasted approx ...

were among the last major contributions from ALOS.

Decommissioning

In April 2011, the satellite was found to have switched itself into power-saving mode due to deterioration of its solar arrays. Technicians could no longer confirm that any power was being generated. It was suggested that

meteoroid A meteoroid ( ) is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are distinguished as objects significantly smaller than ''asteroids'', ranging in size from grains to objects up to wide. Objects smaller than meteoroids are classifie ...

s may have struck ALOS, creating the anomaly which eventually led to its shutdown. On 12 May 2011, JAXA sent a command to the satellite to power down its batteries and declared it dead in orbit.

References

External links

Paper on ALOS
{{Orbital launches in 2006 Earth observation satellites of Japan JAXA Synthetic aperture radar satellites Japan Coast Guard 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami Derelict satellites orbiting Earth Spacecraft launched by H-II rockets Spacecraft launched in 2006

Launch

Mission

Decommissioning

See also

References

External links