The was a Japanese space agency, which was founded by the

Ministry of International Trade and Industry The was a Ministry (government department), ministry of the Government of Japan from 1949 to 2001. The MITI was one of the most powerful government agencies in Japan and, at the height of its influence, effectively ran much of Japanese industri ...

in 1986. Unlike

NASDA The , or NASDA, was a Japanese national space agency established on October 1, 1969 under the National Space Development Agency Law only for peaceful purposes. Based on the Space Development Program enacted by the Minister of Education, Culture ...

, ISAS, and NAL, it was not included in 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 ...

organization, which was founded in 2003. The chairperson is Ichiro Taniguchi. In 2012, USEF merged two other organizations— Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center (ERSDAC) and Japan Resources Observation System Organization (JAROS)—to form a new organization Japan Space Systems (J-spacesystems).

Goal

The aim of USEF is technology development, especially the testing of commercial off-the-shelf parts (

COTS COTS may refer to: * Commercial off-the-shelf, products that are commercially available and can be bought "as is" * Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, a NASA program for delivery to the International Space Station by private companies * ...

), robotics, material sciences, and technology for optical earth observations.

Launch vehicle

Unlike the JAXA organisation, USEF doesn't have its own launch vehicle. Instead, it has used either the

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 ...

, the M-3S, or Russian rockets, so far. However, in 2008,

METI Meti is a town in south-western Ethiopia, located in Godere woreda of the Gambela Region The Gambela Region, also spelled Gambella, and officially the Gambela Peoples' Region (), is a regional state in western Ethiopia. Previously known as ...

mentioned the possibility of USEF developing an air-launched vehicle for small payloads.

Completed missions

EXPRESS

The Experiment Re-entry Space System (EXPRESS) was a 745 kg (1,642 lb) satellite for microgravity experiments and testing of re-entry technologies. The project was done in cooperation with ISAS (now JAXA) and DLR of Germany. On January 15, 1995, it was launched on the M-3S. However, due to a problem with the rocket, the orbit was much lower than planned. The re-entry capsule was found later in

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

SERVIS 1

The SERVIS-1 is an 840 kg (1,851 lb) technology test mission with COTS parts. It was launched on October 30, 2001, with the Russian

Rockot Rokot ( meaning ''Rumble'' or ''Boom''), also transliterated Rockot, was a Soviet Union (later Russian) space launch vehicle that was capable of launching a payload of into a Earth orbit with 63° inclination. It was based on the UR-100N (S ...

launch vehicle. the mission duration was two years.

USERS

Unmanned Space Experiment Recovery System (USERS) was launched on the

on September 10, 2002. The aim of the mission was microgravity experiments to perform the Super-Conductor Material Processing Experiment and also testing of satellite bus technologies. For the first part of the mission, USERS carried a return capsule. It was retrieved successfully on May 29, 2003. The mission of the main orbiter ended during re-entry in 2007.

SERVIS 2

SERVIS-2 was a 900 kg (1,984 lb) technology test mission with

parts. It will continue the experiments done with the first SERVIS satellite. It was launched on June 2, 2010, 01:59 UTC, with the Russian Rockot launch vehicle.

ASNARO missions

ASNARO 1

-1, the first of "Advanced Satellite with New system Architecture Observation" series, is a 450 kg (992 lb) earth observation satellite. The expected resolution is less than 0.5 meter (1.6 ft) from an SSO orbit. The satellite was launched on 2014 Nov 6 by a Dnepr rocket from Yasniy, Russia.

ASNARO 2

ASNARO 2 is small X-band radar satellite for Earth observation. The satellite was launched on 17 January 2018 by an

Epsilon Epsilon (, ; uppercase , lowercase or ; ) 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 derived from the Phoenic ...

rocket.

Other technology projects

USEF developed the robotic arm of the

ETS-VII The ETS-VII, or Engineering Test Satellite No. 7, was a satellite developed and launched by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). It is also known as KIKU-7. It was launched aboard an H-II rocket from Tanegashima Space Center, ...

project to test docking technology in the 1990s. Demonstration of Green Propellant reaction control system (GPRCS) was originally under development for SERVIS-3 project. Eventually it was launched and demonstrated successfully aboard

RAPIS-1 RAPIS-1 (RAPid Innovative payload demonstration Satellite 1) is a satellite launched on 18 January 2019 which for over a year was used to test seven technology demonstration projects. RAPIS-1 was developed and operated by , under the coordinatio ...

in 2019. Hyperspectral Imager Suite (HISUI) was launched aboard SpaceX CRS-19 on 5 December 2019 to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

and installed at the External Facility of the Japanese Experiment Module ''Kibo''.

References

External links

* {{Public sector space agencies Space program of Japan Space agencies