TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s space agency said Friday that a planned launch this weekend of a satellite aboard its new flagship H3 rocket has been postponed until Monday due to expected bad weather.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said it was postponing the launch due to rain and thunderstorms forecast for Saturday night, when the rocket was to be moved to its launch site at the Tanegashima Space Center on a southwestern Japanese island.
The launch was initially scheduled for Sunday.
The rocket will carry an advanced land observation satellite, ALOS-4, which is mainly tasked with earth observation and data collection for disaster relief and mapping, but also with monitoring military activities, such as rocket launches, with an infrared sensor developed by the Defense Ministry. The ALOS-4 is a successor to the current ALOS-2 and can observe a much larger area. Japan will operate both for the time being.
It is the third launch of the H3, following a successful launch on February 17, which followed a shocking failed debut flight a year earlier, when the rocket had to be destroyed with its payload: a satellite that was to have been the ALOS-3.
Japan views a stable, commercially competitive space transportation capability as essential to the country’s space program and national security.
JAXA and its prime contractor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries developed H3 as a successor to its current mainstay, H-2A, which will be retired after two more flights. MHI will eventually take over H3 production and launches from JAXA and hopes to make it commercially viable by reducing launch costs to about half that of the H-2A.
