Japan In Space: Past, Present and Future [1 ed.] 9783031455711, 9783031455735

Citation preview

Brian Harvey

JAPAN

IN SPACE Past, Present and Future

Japan In Space Past, Present and Future

Brian Harvey

Japan In Space Past, Present and Future

Brian Harvey Templeogue, Ireland

SPRINGER-PRAXIS BOOKS IN POPULAR EXPLORATION First published as Two roads into space - the Japanese and Indian space programmes, 1999 and Emerging space powers, 2010, with Henk Smid and Théo Pirard Springer Praxis Books ISSN 2731-5401 ISSN 2731-541X  (eBook) Space Exploration ISBN 978-3-031-45571-1    ISBN 978-3-031-45573-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45573-5 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

To Judith; our son Alistair; our daughter Valerie and her husband Justin; and their children, our grandchildren Charlie and Robyn.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks all those who kindly assisted him with the provision of information, advice and photographs for this book. In particular, he would like to thank: Naoko Sugita, Japan, JAXA Shinichi Nakasuka, University of Tokyo Mengu Cho, Kyoto Institute of Technology Rei Kawashima, UNISEC Public Affairs Department, JAXA Synspective, Japan Yui Nakama, European Space Policy Institute, Vienna Davide Sivolella, Italy and Britain Saadia Pekkanen, United States David Shayler, Birmingham Gurbir Singh, Manchester as well as Clive Horwood in Praxis, to whom credit for suggesting the idea of this book should be awarded and in Springer Hannah Kaufman and Michael Maimone.

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About the Book

This book is the third in a series by this author concerning the Japanese space programme. The first was Two Roads into Space (1999), a comparison of the Japanese and Indian space programmes, set in the shadow of the other Asian space power, China, which was rapidly emerging as a powerful spacefaring nation in its own right. The second was Emerging Space Powers (2010), with Henk Smid and Théo Pirard, which not only brought the story of India and Japan up to date, but looked at the new space nations of Iran, Israel, Brazil and both the Republic and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). With the construction of the International Space Station (ISS), with a Japanese module attached thereto, it became ever more evident that Japan was in the top class of world astronautics. Japanese astronauts were regular participants aboard the ISS, while small Japanese spacecraft called Hayabusa ventured to distant asteroids to collect samples of rocks in pathfinding missions that astonished the world and brought great joy to people in Japan itself. Japanese satellites encompassed an ever wider range of applications and technology testing. Reflecting the regional politics of the western Pacific, there was a substantial reorganization and reorientation of the space programme to include military satellites. Moreover, in 2020, Japan celebrated 50 years since its first satellite, Ohsumi, entered orbit. Between them, this meant that the time was right for a book devoted entirely to Japan’s current progress and future prospects. This book looks three ways: back, to the history and evolution of the programme; to the present, to assess its current development; and to the future, where Japan has joined the American return-to-the-Moon programme, Artemis and plans exciting probes to explore the little moons of Mars (MMX). It embraces the hardware, like rockets, and the industrial infrastructure necessary to underpin these missions, from big companies, like Mitsubishi, to humble valve-makers. It follows the individual missions, some of which like Hayabusa were edge-of-your-seat adventures. It describes both the glamorous human spaceflight missions and the mundane but important ix

x Acknowledgements

applications missions, like Earth observation. They are set in the context of the ground facilities: from the seaside launch sites to the island tracking stations to research campuses. It is a story of personalities too, like Hideo Itokawa, who dreamt of the programme and built the first tiny rockets, to Hideo Shima, railway engineer and bullet train designer who laid the basis for the space industry. There is conflict too, notably with the United States over access to satellite markets; and political reforms driven by purposeful ministers hardly known outside Japan, like Takeo Kawamura. Four prime ministers played important roles: Shigeru Yoshida, Eisaku Sato, Yasuhiro Nakasone, and Shinzo Abe. The book assesses the strengths of Japanese space engineering but also records the heartbreaking failures, the rockets that were hard to tame, the projects that failed like the HOPE spaceplane and the planned missions that never took place. Attention is given to Japan’s international cooperation, notably its network in the Pacific (APRSAF) and its Chinese rival, APSCO. This book takes a narrative, thematic approach. Chapter 1: Origins traces the roots of the Japanese space programme to the launch of its first satellite in 1970, which laid the basis for the early space science programme (Chap. 2: Space science). Chapter 3, Technology, society and economy, looks at the formation of the National Space Development Agency (NASDA), the development of licensed rockets and the launch of satellites for the benefit of Japanese society and its economy in the fields of technology, communications remote sensing and, more recently, climate change. Sections of these chapters are framed by the development of launchers, the key influence on the size and capabilities of the satellites, so the reader can follow the evolution of the Lambda, Mu, Epsilon, N and H series alongside their payloads. Next comes Chap. 4: Deep Space which recounts missions to the Moon, Mars, Venus and the asteroid belt. Chapter 5, Human spaceflight, narrates Japan’s participation in human, piloted space programmes. Chapter 6, Change in Direction, looks at the reorganization of the space programme in the early years of the twenty-­first century in favour of military purposes. Chapter 7 looks at its infrastructure – facilities, launching sites, international cooperation, while Chap. 8 looks to its future. Finally, Chap. 9 comes to conclusions and sets the programme in Asian and global perspective. There is an emphasis on the practical impact, results and outcomes of significant missions in the fields of science, communications and applications. Those already familiar with the Japanese space programme will be aware that for most of its history it effectively comprised two space programmes: the science projects of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) in the University of Tokyo, using small solid-fuel rockets developed by Professor Itokawa; and the much larger programme of the National Space Development Agency (NASDA), which concentrated on liquid-fuel rockets, applications and human spaceflight. Although they were joined as the Japanese Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA) in 2003, the distinctive identity of ISAS was preserved. This book reflects this strangely bifurcated programme, with Chaps. 1, 2 and 4 focussed on ISAS, its rockets and launch site; with Chaps. 3, 5 and 6 giving detailed attention to NASDA, its liquid-fuel rockets and launch site.

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The earlier editions were able to cover every mission and every satellite. Now that Japan’s launches have almost reached the 120 mark, not to mention a veritable cloud of micro-satellites, a comprehensive examination of each would undoubtedly overburden the reader, although all are listed in a table at the end. The focus will be on the principal and most important missions that illustrate the main themes of the programme. Those readers familiar with the earlier editions will find new historical detail that has become known in recent years through the work of scholars and researchers. The nomenclature of both Japanese spacecraft presents a number of problems. This book uses prevailing custom of the Japanese space agencies, which are likely to be already familiar to existing observers. For example, the main NASDA rockets use Roman lettering and numbering (N-I, N-II, H-I, H-IIA), whereas ISAS launchers have a combination of Greek letters and Arabic numbers ( e.g. Mu 3, Mu 5), some even a combination of Roman and Arabic (e.g. Mu-5SII). To add to the complexity – or inconsistency – the most recent rocket started as the H-III, but became the H3 (no hyphen). Japanese satellites are referred to both by their technical designators (e.g. Engineering Test Satellite VI) and by their Japanese name given to them once they enter orbit (e.g. Kiku 6), a long-standing tradition. A note on launch dates: a general problem with Japanese and Asian space launches is that because of the time difference, a launch date can differ from other sources by a day. Most launch dates are based on Universal Time, but Japanese announcements may, because Japanese time is early in the new day, give an earlier date. Although this text has attempted to standardize dates there may be some small differences, which do not indicate any irregularities or anything sinister. The main sources used have been Spaceflight magazine’s Satellite digest and Jonathan’s Space Report which are recommended for their launch lists. Currencies given are Yen (¥) and euros (€), the latter also applying to its prior, historical forms, the European Currency Unit (ECU) and the European Unit of Account (EUA). Allowance should be made both for inflation and fluctuating conversation rates over the years, so should be treated only as approximate and indicative. Photographs from Creative Commons are indicated ‘CC’.

About the Author

Brian Harvey is a writer and broadcaster living in Ireland. He has an honors degree in history and political science from Dublin University (Trinity College) and MA from University College Dublin. His first book was Race into Space: The Soviet Space Programme (Ellis Horwood, 1988), followed by publications on the Russian, Chinese, European, Indian and American space programmes. His books, chapters and articles have been translated into Russian, Chinese, German and Korean. Recent titles are Discovering the Cosmos with Small Spacecraft: The US Explorer Programme (Praxis-­Springer, 2018); China in Space: The Great Leap (2nd, edition, Praxis-Springer, 2019), in Chinese, 2022; and European-Russian Cooperation in Space: From de Gaulle to ExoMars (Praxis-Springer, 2021). He is co-author, with Gurbir Singh of Atlas of Rocket Launch Sites (DOM, Berlin, 2022). His articles have been published in Spaceflight, Space Chronicle, Quest, Orbit, ROOM, Go Taikonauts! and Astronomy and Space.He has broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 5, World Service and BBC Northern Ireland; China CCTV Dialogue: Ideas Matter; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe; and radio stations in Australia and Singapore. He has made presentations in the Museum of Science & Technology, Oslo; and he opened the British exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the flight of Yuri Gagarin at the Princess Dashkova Centre in Edinburgh (2011). He was appointed by the President of Ireland to the board of the School of Cosmic Physics of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies.

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List of Abbreviations

ADEOS ALFLEX ALOS APRSAF APSCO ARTEMIS ASCA ASNARO

Advanced Earth Orbiting Observation Satellite Automatic Landing Flight Experiment Advanced Land Observation Satellite Asia Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum Asia Pacific Space Cooperation Organization Advanced Relay and Technology Mission Satellite Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics Advanced Satellite with New System Architecture for Observation AVSA Avionics and Supersonic Aerodynamics Research Group BBXRT Broad Band X-ray Telescope BSAT Broadcasting Satellite System CALLISTO Cooperative Action Leading to Launcher Innovation in Stage Toss-back Operations CNES Centre National d’Études Spatiales (French Space Agency) CNSA China National Space Agency CNSP Committee on National Space Policy COMETS Communications and Broadcasting Engineering Test Satellite COPUOS Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (>UNOOSA) COSPAR Committee On Space Research DARA Deutsche Agentur für Raumfahrtangelegenheiten (former German space agency) DART Double Asteroid Redirection Test DESTINY+ Demonstration and Experiment of Space Technology for Interplanetary Voyage Phaeton flyby and dust Science) DLR Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German space agency) DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea xv

xvi 

List of Abbreviations

DRO Distant Retrograde Orbit DRTS Data Relay Test Satellite EF Exposed Facility ELSA End of Life Services by Astroscale EQUULEUS Equilibrium Lunar Earth point 6U Spacecraft ERG Exploration and Energization of Radiation in Geospace ESA European Space Agency ETS Engineering Test Satellite EUVST Extreme Ultra Violet Spectroscopic Telescope GCOM Global Change Observation Mission GEO Geostationary Earth Orbit GMS Geostationary Meteorological Satellite GOSAT Greenhouse Gas Observing Satellite GPM Global Precipitation Measurement [satellite] GPS Global Positioning System HALCA Highly Advanced Laboratory for Communications and Astronomy HALO Habitation and Logistics Outpost HIMES Highly Manoeuvrable Experimental Space vehicle HiZ-GUNDAM High z Gamma-ray bursts for Unravelling Dark Ages Mission HLS Human Lander System HOPE H-II Orbiting Plane HSRC HTV Small Reentry Capsule HTV H-II Transfer Vehicle HYFLEX Hypersonic Flight Experiment IAF International Astronautical Federation IGS Information Gathering Satellite (also “Intelligence...”) IGY International Geophysical Year I-HAB International Habitation Module IHI Ishikawa Heavy Industries IIS Institute for Industrial Science IKAROS Interplanetary Kitecraft Accelerated by the Radiation Of the Sun IML International Microgravity Laboratory INDEX Innovative Technology Demonstration Experimental Satellite INMARSAT International Maritime Satellite Organization INTELSAT International Telecommunications Satellite Organization ISAS Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science (from 1981, Astronautical) ISS International Space Station JASMINE Japan Astrometry Satellite Mission for Infrared Exploration JAXA Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency JCSAT Japanese Communications Satellite company

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JEM Japanese Experiment Module JERS Japanese Earth Resources Satellite JUICE Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer KITE Kuonotori Integrated Tether Experiment LDP Liberal Democratic Party LiteBIRD Light satellite for studies of B-mode polarization and Inflation from cosmic background Radiation Detection LUPEX Lunar Polar Exploration MAFF Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries MASCOT Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout Melco Mitsubishi Electrical Company METI Ministry for the Economy, Trade and Industry MEXT Ministry for Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology MHI Mitsubishi Heavy Industries MINERVA Micro/Nano Experimental Robot Vehicle for Asteroid MMO Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter MMX Martian Moon Exploration mission MOFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs MOS Marine Observation Satellite MOU Memorandum Of Understanding MPO Mercury Planetary Orbiter MTS Multifunctional Transport Satellite (MTSAT also used) NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration (US) NASDA National Space Development Agency NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NEC Nippon Electric Company NRHO Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit NSAC National Space Activities Council NSDC National Space Development Centre NSPS National Space Policy Secretariat OICETS Optical Inter Orbit Communications Engineering Test Satellite OMOTENASHI Outstanding Moon Exploration Technologies demonstrated by Nano Semi-Hard Impactor ONSP Office of National Space Policy OREX Orbital Reentry Experiment PM Pressurized Module PPE Power and Propulsion Element PROCYON Proximate Object Close flyby with Optical Navigation QZSS Quazi Zenith Satellite System (also QZNS, Quazi Zenith Navigational System) RAPIS Rapid Innovative Payload Demonstration Satellite RMS Remote Manipulator System

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List of Abbreviations

RSC Rocket System Corporation SAC Space Activities Commission SAR Synthetic Aperture Radar SDG Sustainable Development Goals SDMU Space Domain Mission Unit SELENE Selenological and Engineering Explorer SERVIS Space Environment Reliability Verification Integrated System SFU Space Flier Unit SHNSP Strategic Headquarters for National Space Policy SLATS Super Low Altitude Test Satellite SLIM Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon SLS Space Launch System (US) SME Small and Medium Size Enterprises SPICA Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics SPRINT Spectroscopic Planet Observatory for Recognition of Interaction of the Atmosphere SSO Sun Synchronous Orbit STA Science and Technology Agency STS Space Transport System (US) (shuttle) TAG Technical Advisory Group (NASA) TOMS Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer TRMM Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission UNOOSA United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs USERS Unmanned Space Experiment Recovery System USSF United States Space Force WEOS Whale Ecology Observation Satellite WINDS Wideband Inter Networking Demonstration Satellite XRISM X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission

Contents

Dedication  v Acknowledgements  vii About the Book  ix About the Author xiii List of Abbreviations xv List of Charts  xxv List of Tables xxvii 1 Origins  – The Legacy of Hideo Itokawa  1 1.1 Eiichi Iwaya’s Submarine   1 1.2 Japan’s Rocket Plane   3 1.3 The Pre-modern Period   5 1.4 Introducing Hideo Itokawa   6 1.5 Aeronautical Engineer   8 1.6 First Rockets  12 1.7 Rockoons  18 1.8 Early Sounding Rockets  19 1.9 Uchinoura Launch Site  22 1.10 Lambda: Reaching Earth Orbit  25 1.11 Politics of the First Satellite  28 xix

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1.12 Orbit at Last  33 1.13 Itokawa Postscript  36 1.14 Conclusions – The Legacy of Hideo Itokawa  37 References 37 2 S  pace Science 39 2.1 Introducing the Mu-4S  39 2.2 Discovering a New Radiation Belt  40 2.3 New Versions – the Mu-3C, 3H. 3S  41 2.4 Mu-3SII Scientific Missions  43 2.5 Solar Studies: Yohkoh and Hinode  46 2.6 Express – from Pacific Seacoast to the Jungles of Africa  48 2.7 New Mu-5 Launcher: Haruka, Hirya, Suzaku, Akari, Hitomi  52 2.8 Epsilon Rocket  58 2.9 Sounding Rockets  62 2.10 Conclusions: Space Science  64 References 64 3 Technology,  Society and Economy 65 3.1 A Wide-Spectrum Space Programme  65 3.2 Formation of NASDA  66 3.3 The Exchange of Notes 68 3.4 Building Japan’s American Rocket  72 3.5 Communications: Yuri, Sakura, JCSAT, Nstar, Superbird  74 3.6 Introducing the N-II  79 3.7 Watching Earth’s Weather  80 3.8 H-Rocket: Introducing Liquid Hydrogen  82 3.9 Earth and Marine Observations: Momo  83 3.10 JERS Fuyo: Introduction of Space-Borne Radar  85 3.11 H-II Rocket: ‘Most Advanced of Its Kind’  87 3.12 H-II Brings Ill-Luck, Uncertainty  91 3.13 ADEOS/Midori: Atmosphere Observer  93 3.14 ETS-VII, Kiku 7 and TRMM  94 3.15 Final H-II: Winged Bird, COMETS/Kakehashi  97 3.16 Augmented: H-IIA  98 3.17 H-IIA Loss: Back to the Drawing Board 102 3.18 ETS VIII, Kiku 8: A Giant, Hovering Insect 105 3.19 Beams Across Space: Kirari, Reimei and Kizuna 105

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3.20 ALOS/Daichi: Day and Night, Cloud-Free 107 3.21 Climate Crisis: GOSAT/Ibuki 111 3.22 GCOM-W (Water)/Shizuku 112 3.23 GCOM-C (Climate) Shikisei with Tsubame 114 3.24 Global Precipitation Measurement Core (GPM-C) 116 3.25 Conclusions: A Wide-Spectrum Programme 118 References119 4 D  eep Space121 4.1 From Pheasant Tail to Comet Halley 121 4.2 Third to Reach the Moon: Hiten, Hagoromo 124 4.3 Nozomi to Mars 125 4.4 Rendezvous with an Asteroid: Hayabusa 129 4.5 Back to the Moon: Kaguya 141 4.6 Akatsuki to Venus 147 4.7 Hayabusa 2154 4.8 Landing on Ryugu 157 4.9 Ryugu Results: Secrets of the Solar System 165 4.10 Hakuto R to Moon 171 4.11 Conclusions: Deep Space 175 References176 5 H  uman Spaceflight179 5.1 Japan’s First Astronaut 179 5.2 Mission to Mir 185 5.3 Fuwatto’s Success 189 5.4 International Microgravity Laboratory 1, 2: Newts, Fish, Cells 192 5.5 Space Flier Unit 193 5.6 The Space Station 196 5.7 Japan’s Contribution 198 5.8 Astronauts for Kibo 203 5.9 Keeping in Contact: Data Relays 204 5.10 Supplying Kibo: HTV and H-IIB 205 5.11 From Freedom to ISS 206 5.12 Cubesat Revolution 213 5.13 HTV Kuonotori Supply Missions 215 5.14 Kibo Operations (Russian Period) (2011–2020) 220 5.15 Kibo Science 229

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5.16 Kibo Operations (American Period, 2020–) 234 5.17 Soyuz MS-20 Yusaku Maezawa 237 5.18 Spaceplanes: Origin 240 5.19 Spaceplane Development and Tests 241 5.20 Spaceplanes Reviewed and Revised 242 5.21 Conclusions: Human Spaceflight 246 References248 6 C  hange of Direction249 6.1 Changing Priorities 249 6.2 The Change: Military Observation Satellite 249 6.3 Kirameki and Data Relay 254 6.4 QZSS 256 6.5 The Change: Merger 259 6.6 The Change: Kawamura 261 6.7 The Change: Institutional 266 6.8 The Change: Industry 268 6.9 The Change: Micro-Satellites 270 6.10 The Change: Implications and Significance 281 6.11 Conclusions: Change of Direction 287 References288 7 I nfrastructure and Organization291 7.1 Facilities 291 7.2 Launch Centres: Tanegashima and Uchinouru 292 7.3 Tsukuba and Sagamihara 299 7.4 Tracking Stations 304 7.5 Rockets, Engines and Testing Them 307 7.6 Organization 310 7.7 Industry, Old and New 314 7.8 Resources, Financial and Human 322 7.9 International Cooperation 326 7.10 Regional Cooperation: APRSAF vs APSCO 330 7.11 Outreach and Education 338 7.12 Conclusions: Infrastructure and Organization 342 References343

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8 F  uture345 8.1 Key Documents: Plan to 2025 and Outline345 8.2 New Rocket: H3346 8.3 Re-useable Systems? 354 8.4 Staying on the International Space Station 355 8.5 Gateway/Artemis 356 8.6 SLIM, LUPEX 364 8.7 BepiColombo to Mercury 371 8.8 JUICE 374 8.9 MMX to the Martian Moons 376 8.10 Future Manifest 383 8.11 Conclusions: Future 389 References391 9 Conclusion:  Japan in Comparative Asian and Global Perspective393 9.1 Context 393 9.2 Final Remarks: Development, Achievements and Promise 397 References400 A  ppendices401 Index413

List of Charts

Chart 7.1 JAXA staffing, 2003–2019. (Source: JAXA)

324

Chart 9.1 Launches

396

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Early satellites Table 2.2 Later scientific missions Table 2.3 Epsilon launches Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4 Table 3.5

N-I launches N-II launches H-I launches H-II launches H-IIA test and applications launches

42 58 62 74 81 86 98 118

Table 4.1 Hayabusa 2 key dates Table 4.2 Deep space missions

161 176

Table 5.1 Japanese astronaut selections Table 5.2 Japanese piloted space missions

236 247

Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 6.4

255 259 276 279

IGS satellites QZSS Michibiki launches Examples of Japan’s first micro-satellites Fourth and fifth Epsilon micro-satellites and cubesats

Table 7.1 Japanese launcher evolution

308

Table 8.1 MMX instruments

381

Table 9.1 First satellite launch, orbital piloted flight by the space powers Table 9.2 Total rocket launches, 1957–2022 Table 9.3 Estimated space spending, 2022

394 395 396

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1 Origins – The Legacy of Hideo Itokawa

1.1 Eiichi Iwaya’s Submarine On 16th April 1944, the low, slender silhouette of a submarine made its way slowly out of the German U-boat pens of Lorient in occupied France and headed into the deep waters of the Atlantic. Nothing unusual, for this scene had taken place hundreds of times over the previous three years. Except that the submarine was not a German U-boat, but the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-29 with rocket expert Cdr Eiichi Iwaya (1903–59) on board. It was heading for Japan with the German Reich’s most secret rocket engine designs. This was some journey, a circuitous, enemy – evading voyage, partly underwater 26,000 km. Another submarine, U-1224, re-commissioned into the Japanese navy as RO-501, also with rocket blueprints, left Kiel.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Harvey, Japan In Space, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45573-5_1

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Eiichi Iwaya. CC Iwaya 7007

I-29 reached the naval base of Singapore on 14th July where Cdr Eiichi Iwaya wisely disembarked, bringing with him as many blueprints as he could carry and took a plane to Japan. It was as well that he did, for I-29 returned to sea to make the rest of the journey home but hit a mine and sank off Taiwan on 26th July. RO-501 was caught and sunk earlier, off the Cape Verde islands. Japan had become informed of German rocket advances the previous year. Under the Japan-Germany Technical Exchange Agreement, 1943, the two countries had agreed to share technical information. Japan was aware of American plans to bomb Japan with a long-range, high-altitude bomber, the B-29 and asked Germany for help. In response, the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe had told the resident senior Japanese naval officer resident in Berlin, Cdr Eiichi Iwaya, in March 1944 that Germany was developing a rocket-­ propelled fighter able to climb to 10,000 m in 3½ minutes, the Messerschmitt 163, or Komet. Iwaya was no mere diplomatic liaison officer, but someone who had an early grasp of the potential of rocket technology. Germany had high hopes that the Komet could reach the marauding American and British bombers and use its extraordinary speed to cause havoc to their formations. Early the following month, on 6th April, Cdr Iwaya saw the Me-163 on test at Augsburg and was astonished by its small size, stubby delta wings and vertical ascent close to the speed of sound. The Germans agreed to hand over the blueprints of the Me 163 and its HWk 509A rocket engine, a manual on how to handle its tricky fuel (called T-stoff) and other information on rocket

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propellants. A second Japanese delegation visited Augsburg in the summer under the guidance of Willi Messerschmitt’s right-hand man, August Bringewald. Later, Germany also sent one of its own U-boats, a large, type XB minelayer U-234. Its cargo included eight tonnes and two crates of drawings, including the A-4 rocket, the Me-163 rocket fighter and, acknowledging his importance, Bringewald himself, leaving Germany on 25th March 1945. A companion, U-864, had already been sunk. By the time of Germany’s surrender, it was out in the Atlantic, so U-234 turned itself in and ended up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Japanese officers on board killed themselves rather than surrender. Bringewald himself became part of the American postwar military programme in Republic Aviation and lived to 1993 (Scalia 2000).

U-234 surrenders. US Navy

1.2 Japan’s Rocket Plane Back in Japan, on 20th July 1944, Mitsubishi’s Nagoya plant was ordered to go ahead with the manufacture of a rocket frame and engine. The work was headed by Iwaya. The project was called Shusui, but given the navy designation of J8M-1 and the army name of Ki-200, the engine being called the Tokuro 2. The Shusui was almost identical to the Me-163: able to climb to over 12,000 m under rocket power and attack the B-29s with its two 30 mm

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machine guns. Its pilot would then bring it back in a gliding descent to its base and land on a skid. The fuel consisted of two tonnes of 80% hydrogen peroxide and 20% hydrazine, methanol and copper potassium cyanide, a tricky combination. As the allies drew closer to Japan, getting the rocket ready was a race against time. The Japanese were not helped by the loss of the two submarines, for they contained more extensive documents and samples which could not have been carried on Cdr Iwaya’s plane. Good progress was made with the body of the plane, the first wooden models being built by August 1944. A glider version called Akigusa (‘autumn grass’ in Japanese) was built and flown by Lt Toyohiro Inuzuka at Ibaraki. Two prototypes were ordered, one for the army in Tachikawa and one for the navy at Nagoya. The army ordered 60 training glider versions. No sooner was the Tokuro 2 tested that November than the factory was hit by the Mikawa Earthquake and then a B-29 raid. The site had to be moved to Natsushima. The engine proved more problematical and was not completed until 2nd July 1945. On 7th July 1945, Lt Inuzuka brought the Shusui up to 250 m, using 16 sec of fuel for an initial test. However, while gliding back, the wing tip hit an observation tower and landed hard. Although there was no fire, Lt Inuzuka was so badly injured that he died early the following morning. Then the fuelling problems which had dogged the German development of the Me-163 came to afflict the Japanese. In what was to have been the first operational test of Shusui, on 15th July 1945, the engine exploded and killed the pilot, Lt Skoda. In the meantime, Japan developed a rocket bomb. The Okha (‘cherry blossom’) looked like the German Fi 103 or V-1 launched against London in 1944. Despite their similar appearance, they were different: Okha was a rocket, with room for a suicide pilot, whilst the Fi 103 was unpiloted and used a pulse jet engine. The Okha was carried to its target by a mother plane, a Betty bomber. Once dropped, the pilot used its three solid fuel rocket engines to speed the plane, with its two tonne warhead, into a 800 km/hr. dive onto its target. The Americans called it the Baka, the word being Japanese for ‘silly’: 805 were made and 57 such attacks were recorded. Whilst the Okhas attacked, the Japanese army and navy ordered 155 of the Shusui and work began on setting up a production base at Atsugi. A Shusui corps was formed, the 312 Naval Flying Corps, based at Yokosuka. In the event, only four flight models were made. The third test of Shusui was set for 2nd August 1945. It was delayed and by the time it was rescheduled, Japan had surrendered (Treadwell 2010; Matogawa 1999).

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Shusui

The Shusui and Okha were the best known of Japan’s wartime rockets, but not the only ones. As American air raids began to devastate the mainland, more rockets were designed by the Naval Technical Assistance Unit in Yokosuka dockyard to attack the bombers. The unit’s first was a 25 kg surface to air rocket, followed by an anti-ship solid fuelled missile (Funryu 1, 2) and a more ambitious anti-ship liquid-fuelled guided missile (Funryu 3, 4), flying to an altitude of 3200 m. Kawasaki and Mitsubishi between them developed air-to-surface missiles with a thrust of 250 kg for 75 sec and a range of 8 km. Japan’s wartime rockets could have made more impact had they reached mass production.

1.3 The Pre-modern Period Although the Shusui is often considered the starting point for Japanese rocketry, in reality it has a long prehistory (Wijeyeratne 2020). The rocket was invented by its maritime neighbour China in 1264, whence Japan imported simple military and firework versions. Japan was quick to develop the new world of aviation and set up the Aeronautical Research Institute at Tokyo Imperial University in 1918, one of the first in the world, part of Japan’s post-Great War modernization, partly modelled on Europe’s leading technological nation, Germany. Participation rates in Japanese universities in the 1930s were far ahead of Europe. The army,

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navy and industry established numerous research centres and facilities. The army began small rocket experiments from 1931, the navy from 1934, both continuing their research until 1945. Informed by developments in Germany, descriptions and pictures of futuristic rocket planes appeared in the popular press. The Americans regarded Japan’s wartime rockets as primitive and imitative. There was no equivalent of Operation Paperclip which brought valued German rocket scientists to the US, nor the scouring of the country for its technology. That did not stop them, though, from seizing all of Japan’s intellectual, scientific and industrial property and production. One American technical report, by Fritz Zwicky of the Naval Technical Mission, was counter trend when it rated Japanese advances as ahead of the allies and especially commended their work in fuels and solid rocket propellants, all done under challenging conditions. The principal publicist of postwar rocketry was the naval officer who had brought the designs back from Germany, Eiichi Iwaya. Not only did he write the story of his long submarine voyage and the Shusui, but he re-situated its history as one of technological development, decontextualized from the military struggle in which it tok place. Like Wernher von Braun in the United States and Ari Sternfeld in Russia, he was one of those who in the 1950s popularized space travel in the public mind. So while Japan’s postwar rocket development surprised some people, it might have been more surprising if it had not taken place.

1.4 Introducing Hideo Itokawa The modern Japanese space programme owes its origins to Professor Hideo Itokawa, a teacher at the Institute of Industrial Science at Tokyo University, later the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science. Hideo Itokawa was born on 20th July 1912. The name Hi-De-O means, in literal Japanese, ‘fire coming out of man’. Although of diminutive height, the young boy earnestly set about living up to his title. An early sign was that when at the age of four his Sunday school presented a Christmas play, he volunteered for no less a part than that of Moses. That year, he saw his first plane at Yoyogi park. Going on to Azabu Nanzan primary school, with his older brother he constructed an electric canon that used alcohol to ignite pellets and shoot out of glass tubes, remarkably never injuring himself in the process, to the surprise and relief of his mother. He left primary school two years early, making precocious entry to secondary school. By the age of 12 he was

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pondering the problems of electromagnetic propulsion, devoting his daylight hours and some sleepless nights to the challenge. He persuaded a local blacksmith to make some metal coils for him, though he later commented that it was difficult to get the right materials in Japan in the 1920s. Entering the newly opened First Tokyo City Middle School, he carried out electromagnetic experiments, prevailing on his physics teacher, Genji Kawashima, to give him the run of the school’s science laboratory. Most of his experiments were built from first principles, since, as he said later, the right theoretical books simply were not available. His other passion at school was music and he expressed an interest in becoming a composer. His favourite piece was Schubert’s unfinished symphony: he played the symphony as an extra cellist in an orchestra. He suffered from ill-health as a result of an episode during his summer holidays: picking up a snake, he suffered a bad bite and had to cut open the poisoned finger to wash out the venom. He nearly lost his hand in the process and then suffered a long fever and was off school for months. He had a second brush with death when he was caught in the middle of the great Kanto earthquake of 1923 and later, when skiing, was afflicted with snow blindness from which he eventually recovered. At the age of 15, Itokawa was very taken by the flight of American solo aviator Charles Lindbergh across the Atlantic. Now, he entered the school of aeronautical science in the University of Tokyo in 1932, one of the first such university schools in the world. However, Itokawa was far from a mono-­ dimensional aeronautical engineer and his interests broadened out enormously when in college. He took part in the Tukiji Shogekijo theatre and read the works of Shakespeare translated by Tubouchi, most of all liking Merchant of Venice, Hamlet and Henry V. He joined a literary discussion group and learned English in his spare time. As a student during the great depression, he was involved in leftist politics and was student class representative. Although disadvantaged by illness and small size, he loved sport and outdoor activities – basketball, boating, swimming and skiing. He graduated in 1935, having written a dissertation on the problem of the sound barrier. He then co-­ authored a paper published by the aeronautical research unit of the university in 1937 on the ‘fixed-ground method’ wing-in-ground effect, an out-of-field science that elsewhere became the basis of the famous Soviet Ekranoplans. During the 1930s, amateurs and enthusiasts in various countries experimented with small rockets, most doing well to reach altitudes above the neighbouring treetops. These were Robert Goddard in the United States, the first in 1926; the GIRD group in Russia; and Wernher von Braun and his colleagues in Germany. In Japan, an explosives expert, Dr. Tsotomu Murata made the first rocket flight in Japan, firing a homemade one to a not very

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great altitude from a Tsujido beach in 1934 (they were later adapted by the army and used in its 1942 attack on American forces at Corregidor).

1.5 Aeronautical Engineer Itokawa applied to join the officer corps of the Imperial Japanese Army, but he was turned down because of poor health. While contemplating aviation graduate school in 1939, he was advised by his professor to take up a post as a designer for the Nakajima Aircraft Company, where he served until 1945, though he continued his research and teaching work in the university. Although aircraft-makers like Mitsubishi were better known to their American and British opponents, Nakajima was one of imperial Japan’s main wartime plane makers. Nakajima made the Gekko and Saiun fast reconnaissance planes, the Ki 49 which bombed Darwin, the Tenyan torpedo bomber and toward the very end, the Ki-115 special attack (kamikaze) fighter. Nakajima made Itokawa chief designer of a new plane requested by the army, the Ki-43. His first prototype flew within a year and it was called Hayabusa in Japan (‘falcon’), ‘Oscars’ by the Americans. It entered production in November 1942: 5751 Hayabusas were built, the largest mass-produced after the Mitsubishi Zero and they saw service in China and the Pacific. One army ace, Satoru Anabuki, scored 39 victories in it. At war’s end, Hayabusas were supplied to three kamikaze units, the first, 18th and 19th squadrons when they were used to attack allied ships and ram American B-29 Superfortresses. The Ki 43 became a post-war classic, a collector’s item. In the late 1990s collectors salvaged old parts from Hayabusas crashed in the Kurile islands and in the new century the Ki 43 flew again in Texas. A Hayabusa may be found in the American museum in Oshkosh. Although not as famous as the Mitsubishi Zero, they were a solid design, highly manoeuvrable, had great range and were a mainstay of the Japanese Army. Its principal innovations were a fully retractable undercarriage, telescopic gunsight, all-round vision canopy, two-speed supercharged engine and butterfly combat flaps to reduce its turning circle. It was reckoned to be one of the army’s best fighters. The only criticism was the lack of armour plating to protect the pilot and fuel tanks. It had good serviceability, but was not so good at high altitudes and diving. Toward the end of the war, a better fighter was developed by Nakajima, the Ki 84 Shoku, agreed on both sides to be Japan’s best fighter plane. After the war, the Nakajima company was reconstituted as Fuji, also using the name Subaru.

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Ki43. CC Stumanusa

Itokawa himself stayed with conventional aircraft and was not involved in Japan’s construction of a rocket fighter. After designing the Ki 43, Itokawa was reassigned to the engineering department in the University of Tokyo and made associate professor, now called ‘Professor Itokawa’. He spent most of the rest of the war lecturing students – something he found much less interesting than designing aircraft. He found time to write for wartime newspapers, first mentioning rockets in September 1943 and then writing a commentary on the German A-4, V-2 the following year. Come the surrender, Japan had built up a significant corps of engineers and scientists, as many as 100,000, especially in aeronautics, but they now had nothing to do and the Americans undervalued their skill levels, a mistake they did not make in Germany. Itokawa was, like many others, unemployed. Some went to work for the railways, research institutes or created their own companies. They also formed scientific societies in the hope of better times ahead. Itokawa found work in a hospital on electro-encephelographs and assisting in anesthetization. Whilst in its library, he came across text books on space medicine. This was not an unusual trajectory, for there was then considerable movement and interchangeability between the private sector, institutions and academia. Biding his time, Itokawa moved to the medical school in the university, concentrating on neurological problems and the design of scanners to detect brain tumours and epilepsy. He developed a meter to measure how deeply a patient was anesthetized. In October 1949 he completed his doctoral thesis,

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bringing him back to his earlier interest in music. His thesis subject: the acoustic qualities of the flute and violin. At a practical level, he built an improved model of the violin. Next, he boarded the ship Cleveland to cross the Pacific to the United States to visit technical and medical facilities, lecturing in the prestigious Chicago University for six months. He always had an eye on renewing his earlier interest in aviation. He thought that the future might be in helicopters, but what most impressed there was the level and pace of American rocket development by the mid-1950s. In the years which followed the war, the United States and Soviet Union sent reengineered German A-4 (V-2) rockets high into the atmosphere with small scientific payloads, cameras and even animals. Itokawa now hoped that these developments could be matched in Japan and that Japan could quickly resume rocketry where it had left off. Not until the September 1951 San Francisco peace treaty was Japan permitted to build either aircraft or rockets, but even then rockets were limited to a diameter of 1.4 m. He wrote a magazine article called Rockets in five years! but it was rejected as ‘presumptuous’. On 3rd October 1953, Hideo Itokawa gave a lecture sponsored by the Keidanren, the association of industrial organizations, though one of those there described it not as not so much a lecture as a ‘two-hour passionate speech’ on the merits of overtaking the jet age with the rocket age. The reaction was sufficiently positive for him to form, on 16th April 1954, the Avionics and Supersonic Aerodynamics Research Group (AVSA) in the Institute for Industrial Science (IIS) in Tokyo University. It comprised his colleagues and students, reinforced by ex-wartime designers, civil engineers, architects and experts in mechanics and physics. Their first studies were theoretical. One company even pledged its support – Fuji (the former Nakajima). At its second meeting, discussion centred on a feasibility study presented by Hideo Itokawa of a rocket transport plane able to fly the Pacific in 20 min. Almost certainly unknown to him, his Chinese counterpart, Tsien Hsue-Shen designed similar rockets at exactly the same time. Itokawa told the institute’s director that he ultimately planned to build space rockets to fly far. He wrote an article entitled Rocket transport – Let’s fly from Tokyo to San Francisco in 20 mins published in the Mainichi Shimbun on 3rd January 1955. AVSA soon got its first government grant, a very modest ¥40,000 (€254), the first state investment in rocketry since the war, later attracting ¥5.6 m (€35,605). Itokawa went to considerable efforts to publicize

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his work, its theme being ‘Japan using technology to recover from the war’. He distanced this new activity from the wartime use of rockets and kept repeating the mantra of ‘peaceful uses only’. He fortified his scientific and technological credentials by writing in technical journals as well as the popular press, TV, radio, interviews and documentaries. His skills as a communicator were quickly recognised, wowing people with his wit and charm. He created a virtuous circle of publicity by deploying his knowledge of foreign languages in the international press. He provided drawings and illustrations, explaining rockets in everyday language. He soon became known as ‘Dr Rocket’, Roketto hakase in Japanese. Where to start? He visited leading Keidanren companies, meeting skepticism and incomprehension everywhere. His breakthrough was Fuji where met a former Nakajima colleague who sent Itokawa in the direction of faraway Nagoya Oil and Fats, now run by the explosives expert Dr. Tsotomu Murata mentioned earlier. Murata found, in an old depot, small bazooka cylinders and their explosives used to fire projectiles at tanks and planes. Although his colleagues were disappointed by their small size, Itokawa’s view was that ‘you have to start somehow’ and this approach would cost little money. Fuji provided a test facility and in the midst of this an old, larger mixer fron the Corrregidor attack. These early rockets used a form of nitroglycerin pounded into a rice-like mixture. Itokawa also scoured the old Nakajima plant for other materials, where he found temperature resistant-materials made of geralmine suitable for rocket nozzles. Maybe the American postwar search techniques were not as thorough as they might have been. What really changed everything was the announcement of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), with a preparatory meeting held in Rome in 1954 with the ‘year’ taking place over 1957–8. Many years earlier, there had been International Polar Years (1882–3; 1932–3): the IGY was designed as a worthy successor to galvanize the postwar scientific community to improve our knowledge of the natural environment of our planet. It exceeded its wildest expectations, involving 60,000 scientists from 66 nations and had the unintended but profound effect of sparking off the space race. The two main themes identified were Antarctica and ‘observation rockets’. At Rome, the United States offered to launch Japanese instruments on an American sounding rocket, but Takeshi Nagata of the University of Tokyo, who was there, expressed the hope that Japan would develop its own rocket (Sugita 2010).

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IGY stamp

Following Rome, Japanese scientists Kenichi Maeda and Takeshi Nagata pressed the Ministry of Education that Japan participate in the year. Eventually the government agreed a ¥975 m (€6.2 m) allocation to the IGY, of which ¥750 m (€4.7 m) was for Antarctica and ¥225 m (€1.4 m) for unspecified activities. Over the new year holidays coming into 1955, an official in the ministry chanced upon the article in the Mainichi Shimbun. He persuaded his departmental colleagues that this was a good way to meet the ‘observation rocket’ strand of the IGY. The ministry asked Itokawa could he build a rocket able to fly to 100 km by 1958, the endpoint of the year, to which he immediately and impulsively replied ‘of couse’.

1.6 First Rockets Itokawa first decided to use solid fuels for his rocket (Matogawa 2007). By contrast, the German A-4 and most of the postwar American and Russian rockets were liquid-fuelled. These rockets had two fuel tanks, one containing

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fuel, the other oxidizer, pumped to great pressure and then fed into a combustion chamber for ignition and burning. Solid fuel rockets, by contrast, were more akin to the traditional firework, containing a single tank filled with a gray, sludge-like substance which was poured in and later solidified. Solid fuel rockets were less sophisticated (there was no plumbing involved) and offered potentially greater thrust, but were harder to control or steer and could not be turned off or throttled. Solid fuels were not even well known in Japan, but Itokawa and his colleagues had such limited resources that the simpler solid fuels were the only realistic possibility open to them. AVSA’s IGY-funded rockets were truly tiny. The first was – quite appropriately – called Pencil, being just 23 cm long, 1.8 cm in diameter and weighing 200  g. Using relatively cheap raw materials, Itokawa made 150 firings of Pencil and was able to reach conclusions about the best type of fuel, the most suitable configuration of nozzle and the shape of stabilizing fins. They were fired horizontally at first, at Kokubunji, Tokyo, a disused rifle range in the suburbs. On 12th April 1955, Itokawa and his colleagues felt sufficiently confident in their work to put them on display and give a public demonstration of Pencil, 29 being launched. Public reaction to the experiments was divided: most people enjoyed the experiments, but some scientists criticized them as silly and meaningless. 1955 became the year of tests. The environs of Tokyo were not a safe launch base, so Itokawa and his university colleagues established a remote beach launch site at Michikawa, Iwaki in Akita province in north-west Honshu island. Finding a site was challenging, for most coastal areas were still under American occupation. Sado island west of Nigata was first identified, but Hideo Itokawa became horribly seasick on the choppy boat journey there. Michikawa offered a big sandy beach, local accommodation and there was no need for boat trips. There was some local fishing, but little seagoing traffic passing by. He set up what he grandiosely called his ‘control centre’ there, comprising a beachside desk with ten light bulbs, each being turned off at a new key stage in the countdown.

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Michikawa beach (1,2)

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Monument now. JAXA

This was called the Akita range, which faced out west across the Sea of Japan toward Korea. Here, on 6th August 1955 Itokawa launched a Pencil 300. When one eventually reached a height of 600 m, it was decided that the Pencil had run its course. One was saved for the museum and in 1992 an exemplar went on display in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC where its size and cuteness quickly made it a favourite for children. These tests attracted widespread publicity in the Japanese press. The local community formed a support group to assist the rocketeers. It was normal for about five hundred people to turn up for firings, their ranks later swelled by school children. After a thousand turned out for the more spectacular night launches, ticketing was introduced to control numbers. Other unticketed visitors hired boats to watch from offshore. Foreign reporters flew in from Okinawa and then in 1957 a BBC film crew. Itokawa organized information sessions to update the local community on progress and plans.

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Baby. JAXA

Later that month, a derivative was launched called Baby, 150 cm long and two-staged. Even with a diameter of only 8 cm and a kilogram of propellants – mainly gunpowder – it reached the speed of sound. 36 Babys were fired that year and one version reached 6000 m. Baby-S trailed smoke so that it could be tracked; Baby T had telemetry, a tiny transmitter, a mundane but important breakthrough; while Baby R had a parachute to return. Not every rocket worked: many smoking remains had to be retrieved from the dunes by their crawling brave designers. But, a sign of things to come, there were objections from local fishermen that the noise was disturbing the sea creatures. Things were very primitive in those days. None of those involved in the project had a car, so rocket equipment was brought in by horse! Pictures show Dr. Hideo Itokawa behind his light bulbs counting down a rocket under a wooden hut as crowds of onlookers gathered on a nearby dune. Later, Itokawa

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and his colleagues were able to construct three small concrete buildings and some temporary wooden ones. Each day the team got its instructions from a blackboard in the launch tent. After one particularly important success, Hideo Itokawa celebrated by writing a haiku on the board ‘The sky is high and my imagination is far away, over the autumn sea’.

Hideo Itokawa on beach. JAXA

The Michikawa tests became too successful for their own good. As the power of rockets increased, the viewing perimeter grew from 40 m to 500 m and the downrange safety zones 61 km by 65 km, which interrupted fishing even more. Local residents now had to leave their homes for launches and even for engine firings. Trains had to be stopped to await a firing. Enthusiastic children built imitation rockets, stuffing gunpowder into beer bottles, leading to injuries and even one fatal accident. When a bigger rocket flew almost as far as Korea, a consultation was held and the search began for a new site. What forced their hand was a crash in May 1962 on a nearby village which caused a fire. Quiet returned to Michikawa, now one of the top ten beaches in Akita. Itokawa continued the tests up the Akita coast in Noshiro, where a monument now marks the spot.

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Noshiro monument. JAXA

1.7 Rockoons Neither Itokawa nor his colleagues were sure of the best way forward in rocket development. Following the end of the Pencil programme, Itokawa asked his colleague Ryojiro Akiba to give some attention to reaching ever higher altitudes. Akiba was able to borrow a mechanical analogue computer from an electronics professor and do some of the basic calculations. He suggested the use of rockoons, an idea invented by Dr. James Van Allen of Iowa, the man who made the successful interpretation of Earth’s radiation belts with the first Explorer satellite. The theory of the rockoon is that a balloon first carry a ready-to-go rocket to 15–20 km, at which point it is dropped and its engine immediately lighted to send it into space. The balloon, using passive energy, saves the rocket the energy required for the earliest and most difficult part of its ascent through the atmosphere, the ‘heavy lifting’. The Americans were successful with rockoons, using large deck areas on ships to manage the launches (Hamada-Poret 2013).

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The Science Council of Japan in the Ministry for Education approved the rockoon project in spring 1956, routing the funds through the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper to the Japanese Rocket Society. They nevertheless ended up with Hideo Itokawa, because he was general secretary of the society, which he founded in 1956 and affiliated to the International Astronautical Federation (IAF). Over 17–18 September 1956 the society released dummy rockets from balloons 100  km east of Japan using the meteorological agency’s ship Ryofumaru. In April 1957, the first Alpha rockets (10 kg) were launched from balloon from Ryofumaru. There were many problems with release mechanisms. The next campaigns were land-based, using Nakaminato, Hiraiso high school and the rocket rose to 20  km. A more powerful rocket, the Sigma, 20 kg, was fired five times from April 1957 to June 1958. There was a third campaign of nine Sigma launches from February 1959 to June 1961. Only the last one, June 1961, was really successful, reaching 106 km.

1.8 Early Sounding Rockets Ultimately, rockoons were a diversion. To turn the small test rockets into true sounding rockets, AVSA was allocated a further IGY ¥17.4 m (€155,357) . This was called the K programme, or kappa. A designator system was set down, still in use, drawn from the Greek alphabet: kappa, lambda, mu and epsilon. The principal variant was the Kappa 6, 5.6 m long, 25 cm in diameter and weighing 260 kg, ten times larger than Pencil. The Kappa 6 was the first of its kind to have two stages, the upper rocket taking over when the first stage exhausted its propellants. The first Kappa 6 was launched on 16th June 1958. The second stage shut down early for no apparent reason, but a second launching three days later was successful. A Kappa 6 reached 60  km on 25th September. Japan was one of only four countries to successfully launch rockets during the IGY. More important, the Kappa 6 could carry 12 kg of scientific instruments. Thirteen Kappa 6 rockets were eventually launched as Japan’s formal contribution to the IGY, reaching altitudes of up to 60  km  – the beginnings of space – where they collected information on the upper atmosphere and cosmic rays. The Kappa 6 observations of temperatures, pressures and cosmic rays were reported to an IGY event in September 1958.

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Kappa. JAXA

The success of Kappa attracted fresh political interest, marked by the appointment by prime minister Nobusuke Kishi of Yasuhiro Nakasone (1918–2019) to his first ministerial post, Minister of State on 18th June 1959. Nakasone was already a key influence on the space programme. He served in 19 Diets, for several periods at ministerial rank, later prime minister 1982–7. Already, as a Diet member, he had argued that science and technology were the way forward in restoring Japan’s economy and reputation in the postwar world. Believing that this was a nonpartisan issue, he secured agreement across the parties for a Science and Technology Agency in 1954 (Sugita 2022). He had a definite view of technology in general and spaceflight in particular as instruments for Japan to leap forward, writing that ‘the power of science and technology produced by Japanese society and its people are the key in restoring Japan, the most important factor for Japan to make leap forward’, an approach which some political scientists call ‘techno-nationalism’, guided by the STA.  Now, as minister, he formed a study group of the Science and Technology Agency which issued a report Stairway to the twenty-first century in June 1960. He also formed a Preparatory Committee for the Promotion of Space Science and Technology, appointing 15 members including Hideo

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Itokawa and Kankuro Kaneshige on 10th July 1959 (Nakasone 2000). At the same time, Itokawa’s old Aeronautical Research Institute in the University of Tokyo was reconstituted as the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science (ISAS) (1959), directed by one of Itokawa’s colleagues, Prof N Takagi. In May 1960, Nakasone set up the National Space Activities Council. Granted that the Soviet Union and United States had already launched their first satellites, it was inevitable that Japan would now consider doing so. The preparatory committee made such a suggestion on 4th February 1960. In November 1964, prime minister Eisaku Sato told the Science and Technology Agency to develop a satellite within three years.

Eisaku Sato. Government of Japan

In the meantime, the sounding rocket programme went from strength to strength. The Kappa 6 became the basis for a series of new sounding rockets, each more impressive than its predecessor. The Kappa 8, weighing 1.5 tonnes, 11 m long, with a payload of 90 kg, was first launched on 11th July 1960, reaching 150 km that September. It used steel motor case welding techniques of the type developed by the shipbuilding industry. The tenth Kappa 8 blew up in a spectacular nighttime explosion, probably due to a poor quality solid fuel mixer which made lumps and cracks. There were ten Kappa 8 launches up to 200 km from then to 24th May 1962. The main experimenter was K Hirao of the Radio Research Laboratory of Ibaraki who installed photometers to observe upper atmosphere airglow. The Kappa 9 L was the first three-stage sounding rocket. In April 1961, the month Yuri Gagarin flew around the world in orbit, the Kappa 9 L soared to 310 km above the Earth. Its second and last flight on 26th December 1961

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carried 17 kg of instruments to 343 km to measure ionospheric electron density. Its successor, the long-lasting Kappa 9 M, reached the same height, but with four times greater a payload. It was the most used, with 80 flights from November 1962 to January 1988, the first failing at 58 km, but successful thereafter. The missions were divided into studies of the ionosphere, atmosphere, astronomy (X-rays, cosmic ray background) and one even included a 100 m mother-daughter space tether experiment. The last of the series, the Kappa 10, launched late 1965, reached 700 km. Its 133 kg payload was made possible by lightweight fibreglass. The Kappa 10 made 19 launches from 1965 to 1980 for astronomical and ionospheric studies up to 350 km altitude. Kappa rockets were later exported to Yugoslavia with ten to Indonesia, of which only three were fired, all launched in August 1965, attended by Hideo Itokawa himself. Indonesians in turn came to Japan to watch launches. From 1970, many of these experiments migrated onto satellites, but sounding rockets continued with the S-160, S-210 and S-300 series (McDowell 2010).

1.9 Uchinoura Launch Site Kappa’s impressive altitudes carried a risk: if one went off course, it could well crash on the other side of the Sea of Japan, causing an international incident. As early as 1959, Hideo Itokawa began to search for a new and more suitable launch site. In effect, his rocket had outgrown Akita (Michikawa, then Noshiro). Launch sites were always going to be a problem in Japan, which was 70% mountainous. People were concentrated on the coastal strips in areas already prone to typhoons, earthquakes and tsunamis. Hideo Itokawa visited the Wallops Island, Virginia launch centre as a prospective overseas base, but NASA turned him down. The domestic criteria were that the perfect site should be on the Pacific coast (to obtain the best eastward trajectories, with the stages dropping harmlessly over sea), with clear year-round weather, distance from air routes and sea lanes, with few local residents or farms or factories, good communications and away from fishermen and boats. After two years of surveys, the search was narrowed down to seven sites. Uchinoura, at the tip of the Japanese island of Kyushu, was not originally a good candidate, because it was remote (31 hr. from Tokyo by train and ship), rocky (making construction difficult), afforested, with gut-wrenching muddy mountain roads and the local fishermen objected again, but it scored for weather (apart from twice-yearly monsoons) and, above all, the local government wanted it. It was originally called Kagoshima launch centre until 2005, then Uchinoura.

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Uchinoura was formally chosen on 11th April 1961 and construction work started in February 1962. Clearance of the 510 ha site took over a year, completed for the first operational launch, a Kappa 8 L on 23rd August 1962, only three months after the Akita accident, watched by 4000 picnickers. This began a series of 16 running to 2nd September 1970 flying to 202  km to measure the atmosphere and ionosphere. The later flights carried cosmic ray detectors, antenna wire, a gyro-plasma probe and a sodium cloud. By the time of its formal opening on 9th December 1963, some 72 small rockets had already been fired. By this time, the full suite of pads, control, radar and tracking facilities was in place. Local reaction to the Uchinoura project went both ways. The Ladies’ Association mobilized support, clearing roads, setting up shops, helping the engineers find accommodation and sending in snacks. Children were allowed off school for launches. The local economy benefitted from launch watchers, but there could be long gaps between them, so other tourist facilites were built, such as a botanical garden and tropical greenhouse. In the late 1960s, new paved roads were built to enable the transport of heavy objects and provide parking and viewing areas. Rocket toys went on sale in the shops.

Uchinoura welcome. JAXA

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Building Uchinoura on rocky hillsides proved relatively easy compared to the fishing problem. Fishing is a vitally important industry in Japan, and indeed the Japanese are reputed to eat more fish per head of population than any other nation on Earth. Local fishermen objected strongly to the noise of ascending rockets which, they argued, upset the local fish and, more important, required them to evacuate the downrange area during launches, lest débris from an explosion fall on fishing boats. The main impact zone was 25 km downrange, right in the middle of the fishing zone. Fishermen – about 240, who fished for amberjack – were quick to voice their opposition and in other parts of Japan had a record of successfully challenging airport and nuclear power developments. There was a confrontation: they held up some launches in 1966–67 by sailing into the exclusion zone. The government announced compensation of ¥100  m (€635,000), but the fishermen again shut down the site when it did not all arrive. Prolonged talks eventually led to an August 1968 compromise whereby the industry received subsidies with a limit to 90 launching days annually, principally around February and September. However, not even the most efficient space industries have ever managed to organize their space launches to fit perfectly into such a schedule; nor did the alignments of the Moon and planets always coincide with the Japanese fishing off-seasons.

Uchinoura opening ceremony

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Uchinoura cutting ribbon. JAXA

Eventually, relationships improved and the fishermen agreed to an extended window for the Comet Halley launches in 1986 and an extension to 180 days in 2000. For its part, ISAS agreed to collect fallen upper stages from the sea. On the other hand, this was yet another example of how rocket ranges displace local, traditional communities (Siddiqi 2023).

1.10 Lambda: Reaching Earth Orbit Japan’s next rocket was the Lambda, its purpose being to reach altitudes of 3000 km, far into space. Its immediate purpose was to enable Japanese participation in the next international year, the International Year of the Quiet Sun (IYQS), marking minimum levels of solar activity (1964–5). During this solar minimum, Japan sent up 34 Kappa and Lambda sounding rockets. First tests of Lambda began in 1961, with a test flight in August 1963 that failed, but the second reached 410 km (Lambda 2). The first Lambda from Uchinoura was launched in July 1964, the first of three flights over 1964–5, one reaching 1085 km, all carrying ionospheric or astronomical experiments. Next was the

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Lambda 3, from the name a three-stage rocket 19 m long, 73.5 cm in diameter, weighing 7 tonnes. Its first flight lasted 17 min, when it flew 1000 km high, impacting 1090  km downrange in the Pacific. The third studied the radiation of our own Milky Way galaxy and was the first larger Japanese rocket to be launched by night. The Lambda 3H made nine flights from 1966 to 1977, one reaching 2150 km.

Lambda 3H commemorative plaque. JAXA

The Lambda 3 marked the limits of what could be achieved by sounding rockets. By the mid-1960s, it was logical and ever more possible for Japan to proceed to the next step, to put a satellite into orbit. In 1960, Hideo Itokawa and Ryojiro Akiba co-authored a paper in which they outlined how a small satellite could be put into orbit by adding a sufficiently powerful motor to the third, upper stage of a large sounding rocket. In 1962, Itokawa and his colleagues presented Tentative plan for a satellite launcher. Itokawa took the view that achieving orbit was perfectly possible within the 1.4 m diameter limit. Itokawa proposed it be called either called the Disturbed Ionosphere Patrol Satellite or the All-wave Radio Noise Receiving Satellite. The Science Council of Japan held a symposium on a scientific satellite the following year, one which addressed the following questions:

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Can Japan still make a contribution to space science, despite its late start? Is a satellite project feasible? Can Japan achieve this using indigenous technology, or rely on the United States? How can a satellite be tracked without a tracking centre outside Japan?

Events began to move at a faster pace now. In 1965, the National Space Activities Council gave the go-ahead for the scientific satellite programme proposed by ISAS. That year, Itokawa proposed the development of a new rocket, the Mu, as an operational satellite launcher: this was authorized in August 1966 and Professor Daikichiro Mori was appointed project director. The Japanese insistence on doing so alone, coupled with nationalist sentiment in ISAS, attracted criticism from NASA Administrator James Webb who called it a policy of ‘anti-cooperation’. When China first detonated a nuclear bomb in October 1964, the view was taken in government and media circles that a Japanese satellite would be a worthy response, providing of course that it beat a Chinese satellite into orbit. Hideo Itokawa declared the objective of a Japanese satellite in 1966, Japan to be the fourth country with a satellite after the USSR, USA and France. The Central Intelligence Agency made a report in July 1965, The race for third in space, correctly rating France as the best contender, with Japan or China to follow within a year. Japan had already bought components for the attitude control system of the Lambda 4S in the United States, it said (CIA 1965). Although the Mu was always intended to be the operational satellite launch vehicle, it was tempting to see if the same objective could be achieved with the existing Lambda launcher. However, Japan was not the only country to find out that upscaling sounding rockets to orbital rockets was much more challenging than ever anticipated. According to Professor Matogawa, reaching orbit required a level of precision that could not be ground tested. It was worth a try. This was the Lambda 4S (‘4’ for the number of stage, ‘s’ for satellite), developed by Professor T Nomura with Itokawa’s approval. Weighing nine tonnes, with a thrust of 53.5 tonnes, the Lambda 4S was 16.9  m tall. The first stage had a thrust of 36,970  kg, augmented by two 13,150 kg thrust solid strap-on boosters, with fins at the bottom and middle. The second stage had 11,800  kg thrust, the third 6580  kg and the fourth 816 kg. The cost of development was ¥118 m (€1.05 m). The idea was that a small 15 kg fourth stage, not on the previous Lambdas, would fire for 32 sec at 520  km altitude to give a payload of 9  kg the final push into orbit. In essence, the launching technique was to fire an unguided sub-orbital rocket to the peak of the flight where a small motor would kick the payload into orbit, a technique since used by many of the smaller space nations. The Lambda was the smallest, minimalist rocket used to get a spacecraft into orbit for many years.

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L-4S. JAXA

A precursor version of the Lambda 4S was tested in ballistic flight in March 1966, but it faltered when the vanes of the third stage failed to control the spin of the rocket. A second test that summer worked and that was modified as the Lambda-3H. Now the engineers felt that they could aim at orbital flight. Japan’s first attempt to orbit a satellite was made on 16th September 1966 but the pyrotechnic devices between the second and third stages failed to fire, dropping the upper half of the rocket into the sea. More heartbreaking failures followed. On the second attempt, that 20th December, the de-spin motor failed and broke the igniter, leaving the last stage to fall back from 500 km. On the third attempt, 13th April 1967, the third stage motor did not fire at all.

1.11 Politics of the First Satellite At this stage, events took a political turn (Vuillemot 2001; Sato 2001; Watanabe 2003; Kallender 2017). Hideo Itokawa was not the only person trying to achieve orbit for Japan. So too was Kankuro Kaneshige, also of Tokyo University. As chairperson of the National Space Activities Council (NSAC) he established the National Space Development Centre (NSDC) in 1964, sparking off the two parallel tracks of the Japanse space programme that persist to the present day. The NSDC was interested in a wide-spectrum space

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programme, with applications satellites launched by powerful liquid-fuel rockets. Furthermore, believing in a ‘leader-follower’ model, this should be done with the United States. Itokawa did not get on with NSDC, saying that no one there was a space scientist: Kaneshige was an expert in textile machinery. The NSDC originally turned to Mitsubishi Shipping, but its experience was too limited, It then approached American companies, who waved them off, citing nonproliferation policies. The NSDC got unclassified USAF manuals on rockets and contracted TRW engineers to visit Japan to advise them. The NSDC designed the Q rocket, building three prototypes of a first stage with a dummy payload. As with their colleagues in ISAS, their problem was not propulsion, but guidance and control, where ISAS could not help (it was developing ‘gravity turn’ instead) and the United Stated would not (the technology was classified). This set the scene for the confrontation that was to follow, for Hideo Itokawa believed that Japan should be independent and develop its own indigenous technology, even if it was harder and took more time. The Americans did not take well to this and the American commentary of the period described Itokawa as a nationalist, controversial, hostile, uncooperative and blamed his approach for the launch failures. The director of international programmes in NASA, Arnold Frutkin from 1959–77, blamed the refusal to use the launch facilities at Wallops Island not on the launch centre but on Itokawa. Frutkin might have not been the best person to handle Japanese relationships, granted his experience of the Pacific war. Things were quite personalized to the point that the American embassy in Tokyo even sent a memo to the Department of State called The Japanese space programme  – Itokawa’s version.

Edwin Reischauer CC. US Embassy Japan

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Until 1966, these difficulties could be managed and contained. The US ambassador to Japan from 1961–6 was Edwin Reischauer, who was sympathetic to Japan’s culture and wrote a much-admired text, The Japanese. Edwin Reischauer (1910–90) was born in Tokyo to Presbyterian missionaries who founded a woman’s university and a deaf school. He graduated in Asian studies and became a scholar of Japan, China, Korea and east Asia generally, his first achievement being the romanization of the Korean language. His PhD was on monk Ennin’s travels in Tang China from 838–847, which involved the translation of mediæval Chinese. In October 1940 he took the initiative of writing a letter to the US Navy warning that Japan would attack the US, but that the poor American knowledge of Japanese would leave the country unprepared. The navy responded quickly, creating the US Navy Japanese Language School in Boulder, Colorado, run by Reischauer and then the cryptoanalysis centre in Arlington Hall, Virginia, the US answer to Britain’s Bletchley Park, which he also ran, emphasising the importance of learning Japanese military shorthand. He then began a teaching career in Harvard, where he wrote several influential books, notably Japan – story of a nation, part of his mission to persuade Americans to better understand Asia. When he arrived as ambassador, Japanese-American relationships were poor. The United States wished to renew the 1952 treaty guaranteeing American bases on Japan, but there were the largest popular protests in Japanese history. In June 1960, protestors had stormed the parliament, leading to the resignation of the prime minister Nobusuke Kishi and the cancellation of an upcoming visit by President Eisenhower. Reischauer wrote an article in Foreign Affairs called The broken dialogue, pleading an understanding of Japanese grievances rather than just dismissing the demonstrators as communist. President Kennedy identified Reischauer as the most suitable person for ambassador to Japan and, against strong State department opposition, appointed him. A summit between Kennedy and Japanese prime minister Hayato Ikeda began to heal the rift and a follow-up presidential visit was planned when Kennedy was assassinated. Unable to defend the war against Vietnam, Reishauer resigned in 1966. He married a Japanese woman and set up what is now called the Edwin Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies in Harvard.

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Alexis Johnson. US Department of State

His replacement in 1966, Alexis Johnson (1908–97), was quite different. He was a career diplomat who entered the foreign service in 1935, being sent to Japan and Korea. He was considered one of the State department’s main far east experts. He was then assigned as ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1953–8, which was the main off-the-radar point of contact with the Chinese government; Thailand (1958–61); and then became ambassador to Japan. He was one of the most experienced diplomats available and later received a lifetime achievements award. Before he arrived, in September 1965, President Lyndon Johnson dispatched Vice President Hubert Humphrey and NASA Administrator James Webb to offer the gift of American rocket technology to Japan. Itokawa’s insistence that Japan develop its own technology enraged James Webb, who accused him of opposition and expressed the view that Japan should not be making solid fuel rockets at all. Itokawa’s emphasis was Japan’s indigenous capability (kokusanka). Itokawa explained that he had always planned to scale up to liquid fuel rockets – indeed ISAS later set up a cryogenic engine section – so the American offer of liquid fuel rockets was unnecessary. Apart from inflaming relationships, there was no positive outcome of the visit. The principal American commentary blamed Itokawa for ‘thwarting’ constructive proposals for collaboration through his ‘strident nationalism’ and provocations. Warnings were issued that Japan might turn its solid fuel rockets into intermediate range ballistic missiles and the first stories appeared of their being supplied to Indonesia and Yugoslavia. The Department of State sent a memo to Tokyo, the Proliferation of solid fuel technology, outlining the

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danger, even though these rockets could barely get a small satellite into orbit, never mind lift a heavier, military warhead. Further afield, tensions were exacerbated by anti-Vietnam war protests and – to the Americans – the worrying growth of the Japanese socialist party. It is important to set these events in the wider context of Japanese politics and its political parties. Although the prevailing narrative of Japanese politics abroad has been one of consistent liberal economics, led by such towering figures as Eisaku Sato, Yasuhiro Nakasone and Shinzo Abe, in reality there has always been a strong leftist social democrat, democratic socialist and communist tradition, often critical of American foreign policy. The Japan Socialist Party (JSP) won the most seats in the 1947 election to the House of Representatives and was the second largest presence there from 1958 to 1993 (Hagesawa 2022). There was briefly a Socialist Party prime minister, Tetsu Katayama (1947–8). Although the left contracted in the 1950s, a victim of the Korean war mobilization and a ‘red purge’, it remained a distinct political movement against nuclear power, the US-Japan Security Treaty, American military bases and rearmament, winning 36% of the vote in 1960. For Itokawa to set a distance from the United States was far from idiosyncratic, but in tune with a substantial body of Japanese opinion, about a third. In March 1967, the influential newspaper Asahi Shimbun suddenly began a campaign against Itokawa. The reasons have never been clear. Some historians blamed professors from the Aeronautical Research Institute who were jealous of his fund-raising and political power. Others found his manner authoritarian and high-handed. Itokawa appealed for suport from the prime minister Eisaku Sato, with whom he was on friendly terms. The Asahi Shimbun campaign was so relentless that Itokawa resigned his post. There had been no prior history of prior bad blood between the paper and Itokawa, quite the contrary. Indeed, Itokawa was interviewed by Asahi Shimbun in August 1955, holding aloft a Pencil rocket and again in September 1959. Based in Osaka, it was one of the oldest (1879) and largest-circulation newspapers in Japan (5 m daily), family owned. It was considered liberal and left-leaning in the postwar period, probably not far from Itokawa’s own views. The criticism was that his financial records were poor, though corruption was not alleged. For most people, this would have been the ultimate personal disaster. However, Itokawa had always promised to himself that he would move on from rocketry once the Lambda project came to fruition. When he left the space programme, he set up Japan’s first think tank, the Systems Research Institute in May 1967. He once said, philosophically, that a person should be able to pursue several careers in a lifetime. A change every ten years was a good

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thing and he always made it clear that passionate though he might be about rocketry, he intended to pursue several other interests in his lifetime. Hideo Itokawa went to an Arabian project over 1968–70 to build huge undersea flying saucer-shaped oil storage depots in 1bn litre tanks. The aim was to give Japan a strategic oil reserve, a foresightful project granted the subsequent shortages of oil. Then he worked on a project for a nuclear-powered ship, the Mutsu. He travelled to meet the great rocket designer Wernher Von Braun, with whom he shared the same year of birth. He met the founder of the Indian space programme, Vikram Sarabhai, which led to some modest Japanese help to India for instruments on its sounding rockets. With Itokawa gone, the Americans tried again to wean the Japanese off solid fuel rockets and use American rockets instead. Prof Fumio Tamaki politely turned them down, insisting that they still preferred to learn their own way. At political level, there continued to be support for a Japanese satellite. Prime minister Eisaku Sato told the Diet on 17th April 1968 that Japan should aim to launch its own satellite unaided. So did science minister Shiro Kiuchi the following year. The domestic-launched satellite project was never seriously threatened.

1.12 Orbit at Last Itokawa’s colleagues continued without him, led by Minoru Oda (1923–2001) (Matogawa 2008), later considered the founder of space astronomy in Japan. He spent his childhood on the Japanese island of Taiwan, entering Osaka University in 1942 to study physics. After the war he met the father of X-ray astronomy, Bruno Rossi and moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he invented the collimator that identified the source of X-rays. Oda and his colleagues narrowed the problem of reaching orbit to the final part of the ascent. Japan lacked the capacity to develop either radio or intertial guidance. The first three stages flew entirely by ‘being pointed in the right direction’, using fins and spinning. The challenge was, granted the limited lifting power of such a small rocket, to get it into orbit at the top of its climb by getting the rocket to turn in a horizontal direction and burn, called the ‘gravity turn approach’. It seemed a primitive and unreliable idea, but it should work. On 3rd September 1969, not a fully loaded orbital attempt, the fourth stage collided with the third. On 22nd September, the fourth stage fired in the wrong direction, back down to Earth, so it fell into the Pacific (McDowell 2010). Oda and his colleagues eventually met success on 11th February 1970 with the Lambda 4S rocket from the Uchinoura Space Centre. First, the rocket was

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fired unguided out over the Pacific ocean, the stages dropping off one after the other. The third stage fell off at 85 km, by which time the rocket had reached a speed of 5 km/sec. Then, as the rocket reached the height of the its trajectory, 525 km, the plan was for the fourth stage solid rocket motor to fire for 32 sec, just enough to give the small 38 kg satellite the final kick into orbit. In reality, they were lucky this time. The third stage did not reach the intended altitude and the fourth stage ignited prematurely but for sufficient duration to make the originally intended cut-off point, so it reached orbit. Although the tension fell at the launch site, the real test was whether signals would be picked up on the 18 m dish when it next came overhead an hour and a half later. Waiting were Prof Tamiya Nomura, head of spacecraft experiments and Kozaburo Inoue, engineer in charge. The signal was more than 2 min late, but there it was, coming in over the western mountains and lasting 10 min during the overhead pass. ‘Our feelings leapt from the lowest depths of worry to the highest heights of joy’, Inoue recalled later. It entered an orbit of 338 by 5150 km, inclination 31°.

Ohsumi celebrations. JAXA

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Ohsumi display. JAXA

All the satellite carried was a radio transmitter, battery, thermometer and accelerometer. The signal broke 15 hr. after launch, but it continued to circle the Earth until 1st August 2003, the same year that Inoue retired. Few people noticed, for the country was engrossed in following Japan’s Hayabusa satellite to the asteroid belt, another story with a joyous outcome. By way of a further footnote, four leftover Lambda 4S were fired on suborbital flights from August 1971 to August 1976. What to call the satellite? (Matogawa 2011). The choice of Ohsumi was apparently a spontaneous one by Professor Fumio Tamaki to honour the people of the Ohsumi peninsular in Kagoshima who had encouraged the team to keep going despite the setbacks that they had met. From the third launch onward, it became the practice to circulate a ballot box around the launch team two weeks before launch and the most popular naming suggestion was normally adopted, confirmed by a committee a few days before launch. People could vote by hiragana (the system of digraphs that form the Japanese language), kanji (adopted Chinese-derived characters) or Roman names. The outcome was then announced at the post-launch press conference and it became the satellite’s official name. Later, the name was put out to public consultation and these have been popular events. A good idea, but no one could have imagined the naming controversies that were to follow.

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In the 1980s senior professors stepped in and condemned the ‘mobocracy’ of majority voting in satellite naming. Names had to be associated with ‘enlightened honour’ they said and appointed Professor Tamiya Nomura to decide, although a ballot still took place. This crisis was sparked off by one of the great Japanese crazes of the 1980s: comic books. The best-selling comic story at the time was Hinotori by Osamu Tezuka and 80% of the ballot went for Hinotori. This populist choice was condemned by Prof. Nomura as ‘too loud’ and ‘flowery’ but Hinotori prevailed.

1.13 Itokawa Postscript Japan had become the fourth nation in space, rival China following two months later as the fifth. Where was Hideo Itokawa? He was far away – driving across the nighttime desert on the Kuwait – Saudi Arabian border in the middle east, planning his oil storage project. His driver heard the good news on the radio and told Itokawa straightway. Itokawa ‘sobbed endlessly with delight’ to know that his lifetime’s dream had finally come true. On the Ohsumi peninsular, residents and children poured out onto the streets with banners and flags to applaud and celebrate. An exhibition was opened.

Uchinoura exhibition. JAXA

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In his retirement Itokawa wrote books and became a popular philosopher, scientist, economist and educator. He was, reluctantly, prevailed upon to write an autobiography. He found it difficult to do so, describing his character as being that of a boar in the forest – an animal which dashes forward and never looks back. So he wrote instead a ‘personal history’ poem, serialized in Nikkei Shimbun newspaper (10 November  – 6 December 1974). He may have been new age before his time, for he wrote Fine astrology (1979) and Prediction astrology (1980). He became a hero to sound healers, such as the Society of Harmonic Science of Japan, who, based on his theories, developed the idea that the low-frequency vibration from a cello relaxed the body through bone conduction, an idea also used for healing animals, calming children and infants. Hideo Itokawa lived on to old age – 86 years – until 21st February 1999, when he died of a brain infection. Those who wrote about him described him as much more than a great engineer, a founding father and ‘renaissance man’. He was an entrepreneur with an acute political sense, sparing no effort to win public understanding, financial support and political clout. To do this, he met regularly with members of the Diet, sent treats to officials in the Ministry of Finance and wrote endless articles in magazines. His person-to-person skills were formidable, from the prime minister to the female professionals he valued highly. When President Teruo Fujii gave the graduation address to the University of Tokyo in April 2021, he exhorted the new graduates to be inspired by their greatest-ever graduate, Hideo Itokawa.

1.14 Conclusions – The Legacy of Hideo Itokawa It is said that all space programmes have ‘foundation myths’, typically formed around an original, visionary chief designer. Few provide as perfect an example as Japan with Hideo Itokawa. Although Japan’s postwar space programme has a prehistory and earlier personalities (e.g. Eiichi Iwaya), it was Itokawa who steered the idea through to fruition, making Japan the first Asian country into orbit. His indigenous approach tested the mid-1960s Japan-US relationship, a warning of future challenges to follow.

References Central Intelligence Agency (1965): The race for third in space. 23rd July 1965. Hagesawa, K (2022): Japanese socialism was a powerful force until it lost its political bearings. Jacobin, 27th December 2022.

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Hamada-Poret, S (2013): The Japanese rockoon programme for the IGY – technology and Japanese society. Presentation, 64th International Astronautical Congress, Beijing, 2013. Kallender P (2017): Explaining the logics of Japanese space policy evolution 1969–2016 combining macro and micro-theories notably the strategic action framework. Keio University. Matogawa, Y (1999): Shusui – Japanese rocket fighter in world war II. Presentation, 50th International Astronautical Congress, Amsterdam, 1999. Matogawa, Y (2007): Lessons from half a century experience in Japanese solid rocketry since the Pencil rocket. Acta Astronautica, §61, 2007. Matogawa, Y (2008): Minoru Oda and his pioneering role in space science in Japan. Presentation, International Astronautical Congress, Glasgow, 2008. Matogawa, Y (2011): Naming history of Japan’s scientific spacecraft. Presentation, International Astronautical Congress, Cape Town, 2011. McDowell, J (2010): Kappa and Lambda – Japan’s first steps into space. Cambridge, MA, Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. Nakasone, Y (2000): The making of Japan  – reclaiming the political mainstream. London & New York, Routledge. Sato, Y (2001): Contested gift of power: American assistance to Japan’s space launch vehicle technology, 1965–1970. Historia Scientiarum, vol. 11, §2 (November 2001). Scalia, JM (2000): Germany’s last mission to Japan  – the sinister voyage of U-234. London, Chatham. Siddiqi, A (2023): Departure gates – postcolonial histories of space on Earth. MIT press. Sugita, N (2010): Evolution of Japanese space policy – the mergence of bounded policy discourse. Doctorate, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. Sugita, N (2022): Politics and space – Yasuhiro Nakasone and the Japanese space programme. Presentation, International Astronautical Congress, Paris, 2022 Treadwell, T (2010): The setting of the rising sun  – Japanese military aviation, 1877–1945. Stroud, Amberley, Vuillemot, W (2001): Japan’s space development: past, present and future. Graduate thesis. University of Washington, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Technical Japanese Programme. Watanabe, H (2003): Japan  – US space relations during the 1960s  – dependance or autonomy? Presentation, the International Astronautical Conference, 2003. Wijeyeratne, S (2020): Red sun rising: individuals, institutions and infrastructure in Japan’s space programme, 1920–2003. Harvard University, doctoral thesis.

2 Space Science

2.1 Introducing the Mu-4S Ohsumi was too small to carry much useful scientific instrumentation. The next step was to put in orbit a real scientific satellite. A similar approach was followed by the Chinese, who followed their first, demonstration satellite (Dong Fang Hong) with a true scientific satellite the following year, Shijian 1. To launch a scientific satellite with a useful payload required a more powerful launch vehicle, a proper orbital rather than a sub-orbital vehicle. This was Mu (Chap. 1), whose design began as far back as April 1963. The Mu-4S (‘4’ for stages, ‘s’ for satellite) weighed nearly 43 tonnes and its first objective was to place in orbit a small scientific satellite to study solar radiation for a year. Although larger than the Lambda, the Mu was still one of the smallest in the world, being comparable in size to the French Diamant or the American Scout, being 23.6 m high, 1.42 m diameter, with a thrust of 80 tonnes. The white-and-red Mu-4S swung outward from the launch tower at an angle. Lacking an intertial guidance system or motors that could be swivelled (‘gimballed’), the Mu used a large set of tail fins for stabilization. Although the first Mu-4S climbed perfectly into the sky on 25th September 1970, the fourth stage let the designers down and the satellite crashed to destruction in the Pacific ocean. Success was achieved the following year, with Tansei on 16th February 1971. Weighing 62 kg, it entered orbit of 990 by 1110 km, inclination 30°. Tansei means ‘light blue’ in Japanese, but it was also the colour of Tokyo University, home of ISAS.  Tansei was designed to study plasma waves and density, electron particle rays, geomagnetism and electromagnetic waves. It © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Harvey, Japan In Space, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45573-5_2

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carried a transmitter which operated for a week, though the satellite’s orbit should keep it in space for a thousand years. For Itokawa, Tansei was the realization of his dream of Japan launching a small scientific satellite using modest resources. In eventual recognition of its role, on 14th April 1981, ISAS changed its name from the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Sciences (ISAS) to the Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences (conveniently also ISAS) and became a national, inter-university research institute, independent of the University of Tokyo and answerable to the Ministry of Education, Science & Culture. It had become too big for just one university and soon set up its own dedicated campus at Sagamihara. The first director of the reformed institute was Mu designer Professor Daikichiro Mori.

2.2 Discovering a New Radiation Belt Japan’s third satellite was Shinsei that 28th September. Its originally proposed name was ‘Shisei’, purple star, because it had purple-coloured solar panels, but the decision was Shinsei, ‘new birth’ or ‘new star’, although some were not happy with that because it was also the name of a cheap cigarette. Shinsei was 1.2 m high, weighed 65 kg, carried solar panels and was designed to measure solar and cosmic radiation, the ionosphere and solar activity. Entering orbit of 869–1865 km, inclination 32°, Shinsei was expected to remain in orbit for 5000 years. Shinsei’s achievement was to identify a new, small radiation belt around the Earth, adding to those found earlier by the Russian Sputniks and the American Explorer spacecraft. The belt was located at low altitude near the equator and emitted a new type of radio wave. Denpa was Japan’s third scientific satellite, the fourth to reach orbit (19th August 1972). 75 kg Denpa entered a highly elliptical orbit of 245–6291 km, 31° where its instruments analyzed the Earth’s ionosphere, geomagnetic field, electrons and plasma – its name meant ‘electric wave’. The second and third stages were unable to reach the intended height due to strong head winds and the fourth stage had to be fired earlier and longer than planned. Despite their best efforts, ground control found that the satellite had entered orbit 40% lower and three times higher than planned. The Sun sensor subsequently failed and there was then a voltage fault in the encoder, so only fragmentary information was returned.

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2.3 New Versions – the Mu-3C, 3H. 3S A continuing problem with the early Japanese rockets, great though their achievements might be, was their unguided nature. Everything depended on the rocket being fired at the right angle at take-off and the rocket’s fins keeping it strictly to this flight path. Deviations were impossible to correct and the final orbit of the satellite was hard to determine. High-altitude winds were the curse of early launches, so thrust vector control was introduced to keep the rocket on course. Vector control was always one of the big challenges of solid-fuel rockets. Accordingly, a new version of the Mu was developed, one designed to ensure a more accurate insertion of satellites into orbit. The Mu-3C had similar dimensions to the Mu-4S, but the second stage had, for the first time, thrust vector control with additional control motors; and the third stage was equipped with radio guidance. This achieved the desired results when on 16th February 1974, the Mu-3C put Tansei 2 into an orbit of 284–3233 km, 31.2°, one quite close to the orbit planned. Tansei 2 was followed by Taiyo (‘the Sun’) which studied solar ultraviolet and X-rays, but which had only a short lifetime. CORSA, also called Hakucho (‘swan’ or ‘white bird’) was a 100 kg satellite launched on Mu-3C on 21st February 1979 to study X-rays and in particular Cygnus x-1 (in the constellation of ‘the swan’), the idea of project leader Professor Minoru Oda. It was Japan’s first X-ray astronomy satellite, with 11 X-ray detectors to survey the sky along the galactic plane and to detect gamma ray bursts from neutron stars. Japan’s early work in X-ray astronomy owed much to, Minoru Oda. Younger – he was born in Sapporo in 1923 – he entered Osaka university to study nuclear physics during the war and then worked in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the 1950s. When ISAS was founded, he came back to Japan and persuaded his colleagues that X-ray astronomy should be a priority of Japanese space science, devising the instruments for Hakucho and later missions (Tenma, Ginga). He was the most influential leader in Japanese space science until his death in 2001. By the late 1970s, eight small satellites had been put into orbit. A reliable solid rocket booster had been introduced. They are summarized in Table 2.1. These missions evolved into a more extended, structured scientific programme that pursued distinct themes. The Astro series made astronomical observations, the Solar series studied the Sun, while Exos investigated the atmosphere.

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Table 2.1  Early satellites 11 Feb 1970 16 Feb 1971 28 Sep 1971 19 Aug 1972 16 Feb 1974 24 Feb 1975 19 Feb 1977 4 Feb 1978 16 Sep 1978 21 Feb 1979

Ohsumi Tansei Shinsei Denpa Tansei 2 Taiyo Tansei 3 Exos A/Kyokko Exos B/Jikiken CORSA/Hakucho

Lambda-4S Mu-4S Mu-4S Mu-4S Mu-3C Mu-3C Mu-3H Mu-3H Mu-3H Mu-3C

All from Uchinoura

Efforts continued to improve on the performance of the Mu rocket. For the Mu-3H, the first stage was lengthened. Here, Kyokko (meaning ‘aurora’) was a 103 kg satellite flown in 1978 to investigate aurora, while Jikiken (meaning ‘magnetosphere’) was a 92 kg research satellite carrying equipment to study plasma, charged particles, electric and magnetic fields, the same year. Jikiken was intended to deploy a 206 m long wire antenna to measure the electrical field in the atmosphere, but it only extended to 102 m. It stayed in orbit until 22nd April 2018. A new version of the Mu-3 was the Mu-3S, with for the first time first stage vector control, improved accuracy of orbital insertion and a 50% increase in payload (300  kg). The Mu-3S was used to make almost annual satellite launchings in the early 1980s. Hinotori was a small scientific satellite launched 21st February 1981 with an X-ray telescope and spectrograph for solar studies, producing significant results in neutron star astrophysics. The purpose of Astro-B, or Tenma (‘flying horse’) was to image celestial X-ray sources, such as nebulæ, galaxies and bursts. Tenma consisted of a 89.5 cm by 110.4 cm box weighing 218 kg, with four solar panels fitted at the base providing 150 W of electrical power. Tenma transmitted to the ground both in real time and through stored data five orbits a day out of its 15 daily passes. Tenma was Japan’s second X-ray satellite, carrying five instruments to observe X-rays from stars and galaxies. Launched on 20th February 1983, the instruments were ten scintillation proportional counters, a transient X-ray source monitor, X-ray focussing collector, radiation belt monitor and gamma burst detector. Tenma presented another naming crisis. A few days before launch, members of the rocket team had gathered, in their usual way, in the bar at Uchinoura for a pre-launch whiskey to discuss the name. Because it was an X-ray satellite they thought of some of the constellations that it might be studying for X-rays, like the Plough, Cassiopeia, Andromeda and so on, but the name of Lyra came up, whose principal star was Vega, the name for the weaver Orihime.

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This became the choice of Yasuo Tanaka and Minoru Oda and they persuaded Prof. Nomura accordingly the next day. Nomura still had to get departmental approval, but the official who took the telephone call vetoed it, saying that it was too melancholic a choice, conjuring up images of miserable weaver girls. Back to the bar, various more names were thrown around, like Aries, Orion, Triangulum and Crab, but Yasuo Tanaka and Minoru Oda agreed on Pegasus, the flying horse, Tenma and sent that to Professor Nomura for approval. Exos-C or Ohzora (‘big sky’) was part of a middle atmosphere programme, under chief scientist Tomizo Itoh. From an altitude of 300–800 km, it used optical instruments to observe phenomena in the Earth’s atmosphere from between 10 and 130 km. One particular area of study was the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly and an alarm system was fitted to note whenever the satellite overflew the anomaly. The satellite weighed 180 kg and was a cuboid 1 m each side with four solar panels.

2.4 Mu-3SII Scientific Missions The Mu-3SII rocket had been introduced for the small space probes for comet Halley (Chap. 4: Deep space) and was now extended to the scientific programme. The 430  kg Astro-C was developed in collaboration with the University of Leicester and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, an early collaboration with Britain. Astro-C, Ginga, (‘galaxy’) was launched 5th February 1987 and carried what was then the largest satellite-borne X-ray detector, which weighed over 100 kg. Its aim was, over 5 years, to obtain important new information on X-rays released from neutron stars and black holes. On 23rd February, Ginga was the first satellite to pick up the supernova in the Magellanic cloud, the brightest for many years. It completed its mission in 1991 but lasted until 23rd April 2015. Exos-D, renamed Akebono, or ‘dawn’, entered a highly elliptical orbit out to 10,460 km at 75° on 21st February 1989. Designed to study particle acceleration in the southern lights, the Auroræ Australis, it worked for more than 22  years. Akebono marked a new method of electrical field measurement developed by Koichi Tsuruda (1937–2022), also applied on the S-520 sounding rocket and later on Geotail. He was an expert in magnetospheric and space physics, developing instruments for Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio propagation and electrical fields in space plasma. He wrote a number of internationally influential papers on plasma waves and later became director of ISAS (2003–5).

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Akebono sky survey. JAXA

Its successor, Astro D, also known as ASCA (Advanced Satellite for Cosmology & Astrophysics) and Asuka, was a 420 kg X-ray satellite launched on 20th February 1993 carrying four telescopes. The principal mover in the naming was Prof. Yasuo Tanaka. Asuka was written in kanji as ‘flying bird’ which chimed with Hakucho, ‘white bird’ and was also the ancient capital of Japan. Asuka entered orbit of 538–647 km, 96 min. It was a 4.7 m tall, 1.3 m diameter box with 2.8 m panels to provide electrical power for 5–6 years. The four X-ray telescopes were ten times more powerful than those carried on Ginga and could pick up light from objects 10bn light years distant, rays normally absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere and unobservable on the ground. Its X-ray camera was designed to provide clearer, sharper images than any previous X-ray camera. Between 1993 and 1995, Asuka found 119 distant active galaxies and faint X-ray sources, compiling a map of the north galactic pole. Asuka crashed back into the atmosphere over New Guinea in March 2001. Asuka carried an American telescope, BBXRT, Broad Band X-ray Telescope, flown in space earlier on the American Astro-1 spacelab mission. It had provided excellent results on active galaxies, hot interstellar gases, supernovæ, black holes and quasars. As part of the cooperation, the US got 15% observing time and 25% observing time on joint investigations. Asuka focussed on high energy range over 10 keV, obtaining spectra of distant quasars and transmitted images of the structure of the bright supernova SB1006 and of dark matter lying between galaxies. Data were sent down five times daily to Kagoshima and 5–8 times a day from the NASA Deep Space Network in Goldstone, California, Madrid and Canberra.

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Geotail. JAXA

Adding to the Mu-3SII-launched satellites, the Japanese-American Geotail was launched by American Delta on 24th July 1992, into a distant orbit over 200,000 km out. The mission was set up in 1989 to provide simultaneous data on the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere, especially energy storage in the geomagnetic tail. Geotail was a drum-shaped, with two 6 m masts and two 100 m antennæ, built in Japan, with two ISAS, two NASA and three joint instruments. Set to last four years, Geotail’s mission lasted 30 years until June 2022 when both data recorders failed. Its observations were a significant improvement of our understanding of how the solar wind interacted with Earth’s magnetic field, how quickly, the physical processes in play and the process of magnetic reconnection. It identified oxygen, silicon, sodium and aluminium around the Moon and added to our knowledge of how auroræ form.

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2.5 Solar Studies: Yohkoh and Hinode The Mu-3SII also marked the start of the ‘Solar’ series of scientific satellites. Japan launched the Solar A Yohkoh (sunlight) probe on 30th August 1991, designed to study solar activity on a 3-year assignment, entering an orbit of 519–787 km, 31°. This time the name was put out for public competition, leading to 3000 entries which went to a selection committee that included comic artist Leiji Matsumoto. The first meeting ended evenly deadlocked between Yohkoh, ‘sunlight’ and Kagayaki, ‘brightness’. Matsumoto missed the second meeting – he had to give a lecture in Obihiro – so the Yohkoh team seized its chance to win the vote.

Mu-3SII. JAXA

The 390 kg satellite had four instruments to study the high-energy phenomena of solar flares: two telescopes (NASA built the soft X-ray telescope and the Japanese the hard X-ray telescope) and two spectrometers (the British Bragg crystal spectrometer and the Japanese wide-band spectrometer). The Bragg instrument was built by the Mullard Space Science Laboratory and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Yohkoh was targeted to make observations during the solar maximum but proved equally valuable during the solar minimum of 1996 and the subsequent resurgence of activity. Pictures of the Sun during the maximum period showed a bright yellow, red and black surface

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gushing hydrogen; by contrast, only a glowing rim a few years later. Its pictures of solar flares were circulated all over the world. So successful was Solar A, Yohkoh, that Solar B was agreed as a mission in 1998, though it used a more powerful and later launcher, the Mu-5. The 900 kg Solar B was launched from Uchinoura on 22nd September 2006 into a 630 km high orbit and was called Hinode (“Sunrise’) once it entered orbit. Hinode won the name contest over Homura (flame), an old Japanese word. Project manager Takeo Kosugi was insistent on Hinode, because seventh century prince Shotoku had once sent greetings to the Chinese emperor using the words ‘From the Son of Heaven of sunrise country (Hinode) to the Son of Heaven of sunset country’. It was 1.6 m by 1.6 m by 4 m, with three instruments: a solar optical telescope; X-ray telescope; and extreme ultraviolet imaging spectrometer. The solar telescope was designed to follow the Sun’s magnetic field, the X-ray telescope the corona and the ultraviolet the velocity fields, temperature and density of the corona, transition region and plasma of the Sun. Its main scientific objective was to understand coronal heating and the mechanism whereby the solar corona was heated to over 1 m°C. Two small secondary payloads were also carried: HIT SAT, a cubesat from Hokkaido Institute of Technology; and Solar Sail satellite (SSSAT) experiment, which may have disintegrated.

Hinode. JAXA

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Hinode was a spectacular success, with a much better performance than Yohkoh, sending back extraordinary yellow and orange images of the Sun, its surface and wispy waves. That November, it began a 3-year solar survey. The first X-ray image was taken on 23rd October. In the 1940s, the Swedish scientist Hannes Alfvén had put forward a theory that magnetic waves caused winds to blow across the face of the Sun and spread outward at speeds of nearly 3 m km an hour – but he could never prove that they existed. They were called Alfven waves. Hinode proved that he was right and interpretation of the Hinode data suggested that the magnetic waves also, through acceleration of energy, transformed the temperature of the Sun, 6000 K, into the 1 m° of the solar corona. Hinode data was used to examine which sunspots might harbour superflares. Hinode found X-ray jets spewing hot gas out of coronal holes in the Sun at enormous speed hundreds of times a day. These had been spotted by Yohkoh, which had found one or two X-ray jets, but they were so infrequent as to be considered only a curiosity. The difference was that the Hinode X-ray telescope worked much faster and could pick out jets up to 240 times a day. They came from all over the Sun – coronal holes, sunspots and at random – and were so many that they constituted a major area of solar activity. Scientists soon speculated that there was a close connection: were X-ray jets driving the solar wind? Hinode observed Mercury crossing the Sun on 11th November 2019, a tiny black dot against the raging solar furnace, captured on video and photograph, a rare event with the next one not due till 2032. Hinode’s mission was extended to 2024 and was still receiving observing requests. By the start of the  decade, results had been published in 1370 papers, making it one of ISAS’ most productive missions.

2.6 Express – from Pacific Seacoast to the Jungles of Africa Last of the Mu-3SII launches was Express and the rocket left the strangest story of the series to the end, involving five other countries: Germany, Russia, Australia, Britain and Ghana. The German company OKB, in conjunction with the German space agency DARA had the idea of flying some microgravity experiments and returning them to Earth. The completion of the design

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studies coincided with a period of retrenchment in German public spending around reunification, including the space industry. The price tag became unaffordable. To cut and spread costs, DARA sought international partners. It persuaded the Khrunichev company in Russia to let them have a reentry capsule used for its now-defunct military Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS). This was a project, tested in the 1960s, to send small warheads around the Earth on a three-quarter orbit to descend on the United States from Mexico. The 405 kg warhead, now civilianized as a space cabin, was called Express. The Express cabin had sufficient volume to carry up to 165 kg of payload and was fitted with six experiments, three from Japan and three from Germany. Japan offered a free launch on the Mu-3SII in exchange for full access to the research results. Total payload weight was 762  kg, the extreme limit of the launcher. Where to land the cabin posed a further challenge, but one which introduced the next international partner, the Australians, who had long been searching for ways to bring the Woomera Test Facility back into business. If it could launch rockets no longer, it could at least retrieve them. It was therefore agreed to recover the satellite in the enormous Woomera range in the Australian outback some 5.5  days after liftoff. The mission would be tracked by stations in Germany, Santiago (Chile), Bermuda and Woomera itself. Express rode the last Mu-3SII rocket to orbit from Uchinoura on 15th February 1995, blazing into a nighttime sky. An attitude control problem with the second stage 130 s into the mission meant that control was lost for 20 s and fuel was depleted as the rocket tried to compensate. The problem was later attributed to the aerodynamic effects of its unusually heavy payload during ascent. This meant that the planned orbit of 210–398 km was not achieved. The resulting orbit was so low – possibly as low as 110 km – that it was considered that the cabin must soon burn up. United States Space Command never detected the launch nor entered it in its logs. However, downlink signals confirmed that the Russian computer had stabilized the cabin and the mission had begun. Uchinoura established radio contact with the satellite at 3.30 pm, Santiago at 4.01 pm, Uchinoura again at 4.51 pm.

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Express reentry. JAXA

Attempting to salvage something from the mission, German ground control in Oberpfaffenhofen, Munich asked the tracking centre in Santiago, Chile to command the satellite to reenter, hoping that they might at least recover the capsule rather than wait helplessly for it to burn up. When Express made its next pass over the centre at 5.30 pm, Santiago received no signals and had no idea whether the reentry command had been received. So the story ended. It was presumed that Express had burned up somewhere over the Pacific after about three orbits. The failure of the Mu was blamed on the heavy payload – twice that of the Mu’s previous heaviest assignment. Extra propellant had been loaded to all the Mu stages, computer simulations indicating that the profile would work. The computer must have been wrong. In the end, a number of other high-profile failures like this in the 1990s showed the dangers of exceeding weight, shape and size during ascent through the atmosphere. Several months later in Britain, Geoffrey Perry, the science teacher known for his role in listening to signals from early Soviet space probes, was alerted to a report in the Ghanaian Times of 3rd February 1995 bylined Tamale reporting that a strange object with Russian markings on an orange parachute had descended from the skies at Kotorigu in west Mamprusi, near the border with Togo. Kotorigu is very rural, lacking electricity, water or telephone and the road can only be used by four-wheel-drives. The people living in the traditional African villages in the area must have been startled by the sonic boom

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which preceded the red-hot object descending under its parachute. The local chief, it was later learned, warned people to keep away. He ordered his brother to guard it while he went to the district chief, Mr. Gumah of Walewale. The deputy commissioner of police, Patrick Agboda, visited the area, observing that the bushes surrounding the fallen object were burned.

Express down. JAXA

A photograph later appeared in the Ghanaian Chronicle on 20th–23rd February, again from Tamale, which showed the strange object hanging from a tree and local people posing behind the spread out parachute. It was clear to Perry that it looked very like a FOBS reentry capsule and indeed the article quoted the commander of armed forces in the region, Group Captain Aryetey’s conviction that it was Russian. Perry noted that the ground track of Express brought it over west Africa 4 h after launch. Perry contacted the Ghanaian authorities a number of times to ascertain if the strange object was indeed the Express capsule, but fruitlessly. Having made no progress, he then sent an article on the missing capsule to the November 1995 monthly news bulletin of the Western Australian Astronautical Society with his speculation as to the true fate of Express. More had gone on than he knew. District chief Gumah had organized a transport to take the Express away. Ten strong men had been required to put the capsule onto a truck. Hundreds came to look at the object in Walewale, where it had become something of a local curiosity and was handed over to the army. Two weeks later, the Ghanaian air force took the object to Tamale, 50 km south, where it was stored in a huge aircraft hangar. This hangar had been built by the Russians in the 1960s during a period of intense SovietGhana cooperation and the base commander, who had been there at the time, at once recognized the Cyrillic script on the parachute (lettering on the cabin itself had burned off).

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Meanwhile, Perry’s article had been read by some members of the recovery team in Woomera, who must have been wondering what had happened to their long-overdue cabin. They sent the article to their DARA colleagues in Germany, who phoned the German embassy in Accra. After a few enquiries, it was ascertained that the strange object was almost certainly the Express. In January 1996, DARA officials arrived in Ghana, identified the Express and asked for their satellite back. They found that the capsule was still in Tamale airport where it was lying, untouched and unopened, in a corner of a hangar. It was a little dented, less from its brief sojourn in space than its truck ride along rutted African roads. Until the Germans arrived, no one had known quite what to do with it. The military authorities had set up a scientific commission to determine if it was a radioactive warhead (it drew a negative). They had called the Russian embassy in Accra, which quickly denied that it was their satellite. The articles in the Ghanaian press about the strange object were well read in the small European community in Ghana, though the German members seem to have missed it and when the cabin had been declared lost, no one had thought to alert Germany’s far-flung outposts the world over. In the end, Luftwaffe squadron 62 sent a Transall plane out to Ghana which brought back the Express to Germany in a wooden container. Subsequent examination of the cabin found that Express had entered the atmosphere at 5.50 pm on that January day 80 km above the Earth. Barrelling nose first into the atmosphere, the cabin survived the intense heat. Sensing the onrush of air 6 km high, the barometric system commanded the parachutes to open. The experimental packages were in perfect order and the experiment to test ceramic materials on the nose cone was declared a complete, if belated, success. This strange story concluded the Mu-3SII.

2.7 New Mu-5 Launcher: Haruka, Hirya, Suzaku, Akari, Hitomi Next in the scientific programme came the Mu-5 launcher, the aim being to double the lifting power of the Mu-3. Approval for the new launcher had been given in 1989. Built by Nissan, Mu-5 weighed 135 tonnes at liftoff, making it the largest ever solid-only propellant launcher flown at that point. Mu-5 was 2.5 m in diameter and could lift 1800 kg into Earth orbit. Originally, the division of responsibilities between ISAS and NASDA had limited ISAS to launchers of 1.4 m diameter or less, but this restriction was at last waived. For its first stage, the Mu 5 used a mixed fuel of 68% ammonium perchlorate, 20% aluminium and 12% PBHT inside high-strength maraging steel.

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Efficiencies were achieved by using a collapsible nozzle on the first stage, flexible nozzles on the third and fourth stage and side jets. Another improvement was the use of fibre optical gyros to sense vehicle attitude. Development of the rocket was slow and by the time it was launched had fallen several years behind schedule, the main cause being the difficulty in developing retractable nozzles. Mu5 required the upgrading of the Mu pad at Uchinoura. Although much larger, the Mu 5 still followed the same launch procedure as the older series, being tilted at an angle on a crane beside its launch tower. The initial cost of a launch was ¥13.20bn (€118 m), expensive for its time and type. Shooting aloft on a pillar of bright yellow flames against a calm sea and clouds, the Mu-5 placed its first satellite into an elliptical 573–21,402 6.5 h orbit on 12th February 1997. Once in orbit, the Highly Advanced Laboratory for Communications and Astronomy HALCA was renamed Haruka, meaning ‘faraway’. Haruka’s basic shape was conventional enough  – a box with solar panels. What made it unusual was the 8  m wide wire-mesh goldencoloured antenna which on the 17th day of the mission unfurled like a giant petal, topped by a reflector which peeped through the thin structure. Haruka worked on the principle that its radio telescope in space could be combined with another one to Earth to make a very long baseline, thus obtaining a wide measuring base and improving the resolution. It was designed to have a resolution of 90 micro arc seconds, or a hundred times better than the Hubble Space Telescope, though in the radio, rather than the visual medium.

Haruka. JAXA

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The ¥8.664bn (€77.3 m) Haruka mission was developed by ISAS in cooperation with colleagues in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. Haruka was tracked by stations in five locations  – Usuda, Greenbank, Goldstone, Madrid and Tidbinbilla, whence it sent data at 128 MB/s. It was designed to record active radio sources in the universe, in galaxies, quasars, pulsars and masers (e.g. quasar 1156 + 295). Whereas ground pictures showed a reddish-yellow blob, Haruka images were much more precise, showing clearly a jet of material being ejected from the core. The Mu-5 enabled a much larger size of astrophysical satellite to be orbited compared to the earlier Astro series, though the first such mission turned out to be the only Mu-5 failure. Astro E was an X-ray astronomy mission with two instruments for soft X-ray observations and a large counter array for hard X-ray observations, designed between them to ensure both a wide range and variety of sources and high sensitivity. Astro E weighed 1650 kg and was due enter a circular orbit at 550 km. Launched on 10th February 2000, the thrust began to fail only 5 s into the mission and sparks began to come out of the nozzle area at 25 s, indicating that the heat-resistant graphite had burned through. The nozzle failed completely at 55  s. Although there was no explosion, Astro E failed to make orbit and certainly crashed into the Pacific ocean. The failure came at a really bad time, for NASDA’s H-II rocket had crashed only four  months earlier, meaning that the Japanese space programme was now effectively grounded. Had it been successful, it would have been called Hirya. Astro E was eventually replaced on 10th July 2005 by Suzaku. The name for the satellite originally favoured was Ohtori, ‘phoenix’ but project manager Hajime Inoue insisted on Suzaku, ‘red bird’, designed to be symmetrical with Hakucho, ‘white bird’, the first X-ray astronomy satellite. Suzaku was one of the four guardians in Chinese mythology, the others being blue dragon, Seiryu; white tiger, Byakko and Black Tortoise, Genbu, each guarding one point of the compass. Suzaku was a 1700 kg, 6.5 m tall observatory carrying an X-ray spectrometer, X-ray imaging spectrometer, hard-X-ray detector and five X-ray telescopes. The Mu-5 put Suzaku into an initial 247–560 km, 31.4° orbit, later circularized at 550 km. Suzaku was a Japanese-American project, with NASA Goddard supplying the X-ray telescopes and data-processing software, with American astronomers accessing the satellite from there. It operated in conjunction with the NASA Explorer satellite Nustar, which had instruments crossing a comparable range. Suzaku included focusing, grazing-incidence optics for the low (0.2–12 keV) and high X-ray régime (10–600 keV). Suzaku provided ten years of data (Ryacheva and Sezer 2022). One of the key findings concerned the chemical composition of the universe, published

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in Astrophysical Journal Letters on 1st October 2015. Aurora Simionescu, researcher at JAXA Sagamihara surveyed 2000 galaxies in the Virgo cluster, 54 m light years distant, over 2 weeks, especially the chemical distribution from the explosions of supernovae. She looked at the X-rays coming from clusters and the hot diffuse gas that shines in X-ray light in intergalactic space. The principal elements detected were iron (which had been identified before through studies of Perseus), magnesium, silicon and sulphur (which had not). Moreover, these elements were broadly consistent across the Virgo cluster and its five arms and in the same proportions as what was already known of the Sun and the Milky Way. In other words, the chemical composition of the universe was steady and consistent. Perseus had spread iron all across the galaxy. The iron results were published in Nature on 31st October 2013, finding that the iron explosion took place 10 bn years ago, about 4bn years into the life of the universe and that it had now spread quite evenly. Suzaku ceased science operations on 1st June 2015 due to communications problems and was deactivated on 1st September. Some results were still being published in 2022. The series continued on 22nd February 2006 with the 950  kg Astro F infrared astronomy satellite. In 1983, the European IRAS infrared observatory had revolutionized astronomy by detecting the infrared radiation normally absorbed by the atmosphere and Japan’s first infrared observatory, Astro F had five times greater capability. Its main purpose was to follow the way in which drifting hydrogen gas and dark clouds formed into star nurseries. Astro F used mechanical cooling techniques designed to keep the 67 cm aperture telescope functioning for much longer than has been the case with previous infrared telescopes, cooling it to the extraordinary temperature of −267 °C, just 6° above absolute zero from a 170 litre tank. On arriving in its initial 304–733 km, 98.2° orbit, the 952 kg Astro F was given the name of Akari, the Japanese word for ‘the light in the darkness that makes things visible from a long distance’, appropriate for an infrared observatory. Akari was not top of the list, for that was Akatsuki, followed by Hitomi, eye pupil; Miari, future; Seira, chained stars; Yurikago, cradle; Inishie, antiquity; and Kotatsu. The last suggestion was ruled out because it was the name of a domestic electrical heater, which suggested that they had brought one on board to keep the instruments warn. Akari deployed a small, 3 kg nanosatellite, Cute 1.7 built by students at Tokyo Institute of Technology. On the way up, the launcher deployed a 15  m solar sail, but it did not open properly. Akari later raised its orbit to an operational altitude of 695–710 km and soon sent back spectacular images of newly formed stars in the Milky Way and in distant nebulae.

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Hitomi. JAXA

The liquid helium coolant on Akari lasted until August 2007, by which time it had surveyed 94% of the sky in 65, 90, 140 and 150 μm with a resolution of 1 arc minute. Its oblong-shaped map showed the Milky Way as a bright band of light along the equatorial line. Its images showed thin and dense interstellar dust clouds invisible in normal light. The most remarkable images were of the ageing star Betelgeuse, 200 light years from Earth, which was crossing the star-forming region of Orion’s belt at 17 km/s, spewing out gas as it did so and creating its own bow shock in the interstellar medium. Akari observed eight supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud 160,000 light years distant, finding warm dust grains in the region left behind from the huge supernova explosions, but none of the expected cold dust. Akari suffered a power failure during the summer of 2011, by which time it had catalogued 1.3 m infrared objects since 2006 and this became a much-­ valued database. It was turned off on 24th November. The next, Astro H, was called Hitomi, or the eye pupil, launched into clear afternoon skies from Tanegashima on 17th February 2016 by a later rocket, the H-IIA and put into an orbit of 575 km. Successor to Suzaku but a hundred times more sensitive, its general objective was to study supernova explosions, supermassive black holes, galaxy clusters, black holes, dark matter and dark energy. Its particular purpose was to make the first high-accuracy measurements of super-hot gases round galactic clusters and super-massive black holes in newborn galaxies 8bn light years away, tracing their evolution. Over

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80% of matter in the galaxy was visible only to X-rays. The satellite involved 200 researchers in 70 institutions in Japan, the US, Canada and Europe. This was a big satellite, 14 m long, weighing 2400 kg, the heaviest in the series, costing €300 m, with no less than five X-ray telescopes. Three small satellites were launched with it: Kinshachi 2, 3 and Horyu 4. Kinshachi comprised two technology satellites each of 50 kg built by Nagoya and Daido universities with VHF and UHF communications systems for amateur radio enthusiasts. Kinshachi 2 had a detector for neutron and gamma ray radiation and a a thermal infrared camera to study Earth’s temperatures. Kinshachi 3 had a camera for imaging Earth and space débris and a receiver to track shipping. The 10  kg Horyu was an educational satellite built by Kyushu Institute of Technology with two Langmuir probes to measure plasma density and temperature; and a camera for Earth imaging. Only a month later, disaster struck. Hitomi was observing quasar Markarian when it began tumbling. On 26th March, communications were lost and ground observers, notably the expert Arizonan satellite watcher Paul Maley, spotted débris, originally five and then 11 objects, with the satellite itself spinning. Its beacon was picked up over Kagoshima on four occasions up to the 28th and what was thought to be its beacon by Santiago, Chile, the following day, but this may have been spurious. Initially, the loss was attributed to space débris, an on-board explosion, decompression, or leak of fuel or coolant. Other observers spotted its remains, tumbling and flashing every 2.6 s. On 28th April, JAXA came to the conclusion that the solar panels had separated from the spacecraft and finally gave up. The explanation, though, was more mundane, as the JAXA investigation report finally and embarrassingly revealed in June. Divergences between the star tracker and the gyroscope led the spacecraft’s control system to believe that it was spinning, which it was not, forcing the reaction wheels to correct the spin, which then started a real spin. Ground control sent up incorrect commands to realign the spacecraft – which instead made it spin faster, to the point that it disintegrated. Ultimately, these were human-induced errors. The mood in the Japanese space science community was gloomy at the loss of such a promising satellite so soon. Three senior executives subsequently volunteered a 10% four-month pay cut by way of atonement (Tasker 2016). Later that summer it was found out that before it failed, Hitomi provided new observations of the Perseus galaxy 250  m light years away with its soft X-ray spectrometer. It took images of slowly moving gas  – 150  m  km/s  – 60 kiloparsecs across the central nucleus of the galaxy. Hitherto it had been thought that the core of the galaxy would have a hot, fast moving, engine injecting shocks and bubbles into the galaxy and thereby creating turbulence, but instead it was remarkably quiet. Findings were presented in Nature by JAXA and Yale scientists (Szymkowiak, Urray, Coppi & Tadayuki 2016; Ryacheva

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Table 2.2  Later scientific missions 17 Feb 1980 21 Feb 1981 20 Feb 1983 14 Feb 1984 5 Feb 1987 21 Feb 1989 30 Aug 1991 20 Feb 1993 12 Feb 1997 10 Jul 2005 21 Feb 2006 22 Sep 2006 17 Feb 2016

Tansei 4 Hinotori Astro B/Tenma Exo C/Ohzora Astro C/Ginga Exos D/Akebono Solar A/Yohkoh Astro D/ASCA/Asuka Muses B/Haruka Astro E2/Suzaku Astro F/Akari Solar B/Hinode Astro H/Hitomi

Mu-3S Mu-3S Mu-3S Mu-3S Mu-3SII Mu-2SII Mu-3SII Mu-3SII Mu-5 Mu-5 Mu-5 Mu-5 H-IIA

All from Uchinoura, except Astro H, Tanegashima. Minor payloads not included

and Sezer 2022). Hitomi was the last of the series, Astro G having been cancelled. Later, its place would be taken by XRISM (2023) and ATHENA (2034) (Future, Chap. 8). Hitomi also marked the end of the Astro, Solar, Exos-type programme of small scientific satellites dating to Tansei in 1971 (Table 2.2).

2.8 Epsilon Rocket When the Mu 5 rocket launched Hinode on 22nd September 2006, it was announced that this would be the last Mu mission. The phasing out of the Mu was contested, for some engineers believed that it was the best solid-fuel rocket ever built anywhere, still had abundant potential and could go on much longer. However, bigger issues had now engulfed the Japanese space programme (Chap. 6: Change of direction). Originally, it had been intended that the Mu be replaced by the J-1 rocket. This was a three-stage solid fuel rocket to put a tonne into low Earth orbit, combining the solid rocket booster of the H-II with the upper stage of the Mu-3SII, but its sole flight was the sub-orbital spaceplane test, HYFLEX, on 12th February 1996. An improved J-1 presented by Ishikawa Heavy Industries (IHI) and Nissan, was approved in 1997, to use the Russian NK-33 engine for the first stage and Liquid Natural Gas (LNG), a higher density fuel requiring a smaller tank, for the second. When the MTS launch failed on the unrelated H-IIA rocket on 15th November 1999, the space agency cancelled the J-1, transferring its funding to fix the H-IIA. However, there was always going to be a role for a small rocket, so the J-1 was now revived as the GX, an industry-led project with an American first stage. NASDA again contracted IHI for this task in 2000, changing to a company called GALEX, based on seven companies, the following year. By 2006, the launch date had slipped to 2011 and it had been re-costed at ¥35  bn

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(€222 m). Becoming a zombie project, GX was eventually cancelled on 16th December 2009, foundering on a mixture of technical difficulties and poor government-industry coordination. To stay in the rocket business, IHI made a fresh proposal for a more conventional, low-cost rocket, the Epsilon. Epsilon was 26  m long, diameter 2.6 m and weighed 96 tonnes, intended to lift 450 kg. Its target launch cost was ¥3.8 bn (€24 m), but in reality ¥5.3 bn (€63 m) but still less than Muses, now ¥8 bn (€50 m). Epsilon comprised four stages: the SRB-A3 solid rocket booster derived from the H-IIA rocket (Chap. 3) (first stage); the M-34, then M-35 from the Mu-5 (second stage); an improved version of the Mu-5 second stage, the KM-V2a and then 2b (third stage); and a liquid fuel post-boost system of eight 50 N thrusters for Sun Synchronous Orbit missions (fourth stage). The avionics were lifted from the H-IIA (Morita et al. 2014). Project manager Prof. Yasuhiro Morita explained that the Epsilon would be effectively a new rocket, not just an improvement of the Mu-5. It was designed from the start to carry multiple satellites. It would have a smaller, simpler ground structure, shortening launch campaigns from 42 days to a computer-­ supervised 7  days. Checkout operations would be conducted from laptop computers using inspection devices on the side of the rocket.

SPRINT A. JAXA

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Its first launch was SPRINT A on 14th September 2013. Local people saw Epsilon as a new breath of life into Uchinoura and on launch day large crowds, from school children to old people, turned out to see the takeoff. Goodwill messages were, in miniature, painted onto the side of the rocket. Crowds cheered the liftoff both onsite and on big screens in Tokyo. An earlier countdown had been abandoned seconds before liftoff, but this time it was fine, Epsilon releasing the payload after 61 min into an orbit of 952–1155 km, 29.7°. SPRINT A, called Hisaki, stood for Spectroscopic Planet Observatory for Recognition of Interaction of the Atmosphere (SPRINT), its purpose being to study Venus, Mars and Jupiter from its Earth orbit of 1000  km. Hisaki was a small spacecraft, 348  kg, 4  m tall, 7  m span generating 900 W. Hisaki had a 20 cm silicon carbide mirror with an extreme ultraviolet spectrometer for the 550–1450 Å range, aimed the exospheres of solar system planets. Japan claimed that Hisaki was the first satellite-based observer of the atmosphere, magnetosphere and plasma of other planets. In 2021, Hisaki was one of two satellites – the other being NASA’s Juno spacecraft then orbiting Jupiter – along with Keck observatory that solved the problem of the high temperatures in its atmosphere. Hisaki had been observing, since its launch, Jupiter’s magnetic field and found that it was 10,000 times stronger than Earth’s, rotating every 10 h. Because of its distance from the Sun, its temperature should have been −73 °C but in fact was +426 °C. The explanation? Jupiter had the most powerful auroræ in the solar system, able to heat up the upper atmosphere, fed not only by the solar wind but also by eruptions from the volcanic moon Io. By 2022, 51 scientific papers had been published from the Hisaki mission. Its telescope observed how the Martian atmosphere released, during dust storms, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. This original Epsilon was used only once and the following launches were called the E series, E or Enhanced version. Its specification was to lift 600 kg to Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO); increase payload height from 2300 mm to 280 mm; and reduce cost from €47 m to between €28 m and €37.6 m. The main changes would be a new M-35 second stage with a more powerful motor; computerized controls (‘smart avionics’); reduced production costs; and common parts with the upcoming H3 rocket (Morita et al. 2014).

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Epsilon clears tower. JAXA

Epsilon’s second launch was on 20th December 2016, with deployment at 13 min 27 s of Exploration and energization of Radiation in Geospace (ERG), a 350 kg satellite to find out how highly charged electrons are formed and then vanish in space storms. ERG was renamed Arase (‘river raging with white water’). Its orbit was designed to fly in and out of the Van Allen radiation belts, its four 15 m wire antennæ measuring trapped electrons and ions at various levels, magnetic fields, plasma waves and their interactions. Its orbit was 440–32,000  km, inclination 32°, with a 570 min period. It carried a formidable array of experiments for low and medium energy particle electrons and ion mass; high and extremely high electrons; and for magnetic and plasma field. In 2021, Arase contributed to the first successful measurement of the electromagnetic ion cyclotron which explained the loss of high energy electrons precipitated into the upper atmosphere, the findings declared a highlight of Geophysical Research Letters in 2020. Arase also found that plasma as high 30,000 km above Earth was being precipitated into the auroral arcs which formed at around 100  km, challenging long-held assumptions that such acceleration took place only at lower altitudes. Arase followed 12 geospace storms and made 512 observations of plasma waves. By 2022, 170 scientific papers had been published from the Arase mission.

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Table 2.3  Epsilon launches 14 Sep 2013 20 Dec 2016 17 Jan 2018 18 Jan 2019 9 Nov 2021 7 Oct 2022

SPRINT A (Hisaki) ERG (Arase) ASNARO 2 RAPIS RAISE 2 RAISE 3 (fail)

All from Uchinoura

From this point on, though, Epsilon was directed away from space science and toward observation and technology development missions, accompanied by micro-satellites, part of a radical change in the orientation of the programme (Chap. 6: Change of direction). Next was ‘Synergy Epsilon’ or Epsilon S, able to lift 750  kg to SSO, which would use even more parts from the upcoming H3, especially its avionics, with more propellant in the first stage (up to 67 tonnes) and in the third (doubled to 5 tonnes); the third stage three-­ axis stabilized, replacing the spin-stabilized Mu-5 version; and a fourth stage using new nontoxic storable propellant. Launch was set for 2024, but in a 120 s test firing on 7th July 2023, pressure in the second stage motor deviated at 20 s, leading to an explosion at 57 s, sending up into the atmosphere a high column of white-and-grey smoke over its still flaming débris and wrecking the vacuum engine test building, now a blackened shell (Table 2.3).

2.9 Sounding Rockets Although sounding rockets paved the way for Japan’s first orbital missions, they did not become redundant when orbital spaceflight became commonplace: between the start of the space age and 1996, Japan flew 325 sounding rockets. The later sounding rockets developed were the S-310 and S-520 (sometimes a double ‘S’, as in ‘SS’ is given) which first flew in 1980 and replaced the Kappa-M. The S-310 rocket weighed 2.285 tonnes, was nearly 9 m long and could reach an altitude of 350 km. It was launched from a platform through the roof of an enclosed pad, reminiscent of the way a telescope sticks through the dome of an observatory. The S-520 weighed 2.6 tonnes, was 9.5 m tall and had a diameter of 52 cm. ISAS also used the Nissan MT-135, the smallest sounding rocket, developed by Prof Fumio Tamaki, launched from the Japanese Meteorological Agency’s weather station at Ryori on the north east coast, both for general forecasting and to study specific problems such as the ozone layer.

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There were overseas launches. Despite the earlier brush-off, a sounding rocket campaign was conducted with the United States at Wallops Island in 1967. The S-310 and the S-520 were also launched from Antarctica (the Japanese base at Showa) and the Norwegian base on Andøya, in the Vesterålen archipelago. ISAS used sounding rockets for many purposes. Sounding rockets are often the understated poor relation of space science and technology, not always well-documented. Some examples are given: –– On 18th February 1983, a S-520 sounding rocket was used for a Microwave Energy Transmission in Space (METS) experiment, examining the possibility of transmitting solar energy to power the electricity grid on Earth. –– On 4th December 2000, an S-520-2 sounding rocket was launched from Andøya with ten experiments to study the ionosphere, electrons and the magnetic field up to 1000 km, finding escaping oxygen ions and what is called auroral hiss. –– On 2nd August 2008, a S-520-24 was rocketed to a height of 293 km with a crystal growth experiment. –– On 20th July 2013 there were two atmospheric science sounding rocket launches, one on the S-520, the other on the S-310. The S-520 carried out measurements of density and electrical field, releasing lithium to study F region neutral winds, while the S-310 released a trimethyl aluminium package to study E region neutral winds. –– A S-520 was launched on 17th August 2014 to study the E-layer. –– The S-520 launched on 30th August 2020 from Uchinoura the Tether Technology Rocket EXperiment (T-REX), two spacecraft separated by a long, 300 m electrodynamic tether and a shorter one. They flew 10 min before crashing into the Pacific. –– On 4th November 2021, an S-520-3 flew 956 km to study plasma, electrons, ions and electromagnetic fields in the cusp. Sounding rockets were used to test solar sails that could be used to enable spacecraft to travel long distances across the solar system using the solar wind. The first solar sail, a mere 300  μm thick, was tested by balloon in August 2003. The following year, on 9th August 2004, using the sounding rocket base in Uchinoura, a S-310 sounding rocket deployed two sails: a clover-­ shaped sail at 122 km altitude and a fan-shaped sail at 169 km. Both deployments of the 750 micrometer thin sails were successful and photographed before the sounding rocket fell back into the Pacific. As sounding rocket performance improved, consideration was given to see whether such rockets could reach orbit. An attempt was made to get the S-520

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sounding rocket into orbit with a 3.3  kg cubesat called Tricom on 15th January 2017. The launch began well and it seemed to be on course, but telemetry was lost after 20 s. The cautious range safety decision was taken not to command the second stage to fire, in case it veered off course and caused danger and the rocket was believed to crash downrange after reaching a height of 200  km. Success came on the second occasion on 3rd February 2018, orbiting Shinichi Nakasuka’s 3.3 kg Tricom 1R Tasuki to photograph Earth’s surface. It was the smallest orbital launch from the ground ever.

2.10 Conclusions: Space Science Ohsumi paved the way, as Professor Itokawa always hoped, for a programme of small scientific satellites, lasting to 2016. The Chap. 6: Change of direction will outline significant subsequent changes in the scientific programme. Japan’s approach did not go unnoticed abroad, being commended by Dr. Freeman Dyson when he took the stand at the Challenger enquiry. Japan had achieved a lot in space science, he said, by launching one small scientific satellite a year, contrasting it with the American ‘great warship with big gun’ mentality.

References Morita, Y et  al (2014): Further evolution plan of Japan’s Epsilon launch vehicle. Presentation, 65th International Astronautical Congress, 2014. Ryacheva, N & Sezer, A (2022): A search for thermal; X-ray emission from the composite supernova remnant G21.5-0.9 with Suzaku. Advances in Space Research, §69, 2022. Szymkowiak, A; Urry, M; Coppi, P; & Tadayuki, T (2016): The quiescent intracluster medium in the core of the Perseus cluster. Nature, 535, 7th July 2016. Tasker, E (2016): What killed Japan’s Hitomi X-ray satellite? Scientific American, 16th June 2016.

3 Technology, Society and Economy

3.1 A Wide-Spectrum Space Programme Until the late 1960s, spending on space research had gone to a number of different organizations and groups, although the university’s successes meant that it attracted the most public attention. The amounts of public money spent had been modest enough – ¥1.369bn (€122 m) over the years 1954–70. The government had established the National Space Activities Council in the prime minister’s office as far back as May 1960 to present advice and devise policy on space flight, evolving in May 1968 into the Space Activities Commission (SAC), whose function was to propose policies, submit proposals to the prime minister and bring coherence to work in the field. It became the principal policy-making and coordination body, estimating spending, making proposals to the prime minister and writing an annual space development plan. Pressure for a more aggressive space programme came from Japanese industry. The federation of economic organizations, the Keidanren, established a space committee in June 1960, leading to its Space Activities Promotion Council set up on 10th June 1968, bringing together 89 companies so engaged. Its role was to present the needs of space-based companies to government, make proposals for the development of space activities and ensure better public understanding of space exploration. With Japan’s now-rapid economic growth, business organizations began to campaign for long-term planning to develop a space industry and other forms of advanced technology, for example to bring television reception to all the Japanese islands. The Nikkeiren association proposed an ambitious 15-year plan for a range of © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Harvey, Japan In Space, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45573-5_3

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applications satellites, a powerful liquid hydrogen fuelled rocket to launch them and a space laboratory. The industry committee often had the effect of upping the ante on the government’s SAC, spurring it to think more ambitiously. Communications satellites quickly emerged as the top area of interest. It was not lost on Japan that the 1964 Olympics, held in Tokyo, were the first to be broadcast around the world by satellite, the Syncom relay satellite. The following year, the United States set up what was initially called Early Bird, the first of a system of satellites in 24 hr. geosynchronous orbit – the position, 36,000 km above the Earth where a satellite takes one day to orbit the Earth and thus appears to hover all the time, the ideal location for communication and weather satellites – comsats and metsats. Reaching such an altitude over the equator, though, required a powerful, liquid-fuel rocket far more capable than Itokawa’s small solid-fuel rockets. Although Itokawa was not uninterested in liquid-fuel rockets, his main focus was science and in the 1960s policy-­makers like the Science and Technology Agency increasingly decided that such a more powerful rocket should be assigned to a new agency. In Long-­ term plan for the launch and utilization of satellites, the National Space Activities Council on 3rd August 1966 articulated the twin track approach of a scientific satellite in 1967 and a broadcasting satellite in 1970.

3.2 Formation of NASDA The government responded to persistent industrial lobbying with the establishment of NASDA, set up on 1st October 1969 under law #50, 23rd June 1969 during the prime ministership of Eisaku Sato. It was given the English-­ language tagline of ‘National Space Development Agency’, even though these letters do not quite sync with its formal initials. NASDA was formed out of the National Space Development Centre (NSDC) (set up 1st July 1964), the Science & Technology Agency and the Radio Research Laboratory of the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications, its initial staff complement being 151. Its brief was to develop artificial satellites, plan space programmes, develop and launch rockets, track and control satellites and develop the necessary technologies, facilities and equipment. NASDA was specifically charged with responsibility for the development of launch vehicles; the promotion of technologies for remote sensing; and the promotion of space experiments. The idea was that NASDA would take charge of launch vehicle development, operations and the development of technology and applications satellites.

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Specifically, it was to develop the already mooted Q plan (1250 kg satellite to 1000 km orbit by 1972) and N plan (100 kg to geostationary orbit by 1974). Tokyo University, through the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science, continued to retain responsibility for sounding rockets and scientific satellites. Although ISAS could continue to develop its own small solid-fuel rockets, the delineation of responsibilities between the two set a limit on ISAS rocket size: not more than a diameter of 1.41 m. NASDA always obtained a lion’s share of spaceflight funding, around 80%, the ISAS proportion eventually falling to less than 8%. The 1969 law institutionalized, rather than resolved the divided nature of the Japanese space programme and this division lasted over 30 years (arguably, it still does). Japan in effect developed two different, parallel space programmes, a unique approach in a civilian space programme. NASDA and ISAS each had its own fleet of rockets, launch sites, mission controls and tracking systems. This was rarely formally acknowledged. ISAS literature rarely mentioned the work of NASDA and vice versa – indeed it was possible for a novice to read of the work of one in ignorance of the existence of the other. Having said this, despite the division of work between ISAS and NASDA, there was personnel movement between the two and little overt antagonism. A critical decision was its first head, for that person would set the tone, style and ambition of all who were to follow. First head of NASDA was railway engineer, Hideo Shima, developer of the Shinkansen super-fast trains. Hideo Shima (1901–98) was son of engineer Yasujiro Shima, chief engineer of Japanese railways, who built the network of high-performance narrow-gauge steam lines. Hideo went straight into railways himself, replacing single engines with multiple power units distributed on many carriages, better suited to Japan’s gradients and curves, introducing them on medium-range routes in the 1950s. The lines were quickly saturated, so in 1955 Hideo Shima persuaded Japanese Railways (JR) of the need for a 200 km/hr. high-speed service on mainline rail, even in the face of World Bank views that it was too experimental. Hideo Shima shared with Hideo Itokawa the experience of being forced out of the job that he loved before it was even completed. He was obliged to resign from JR in 1963 due to the cost of Shinkansen, largely attributed to its costly 3000 bridges and 67 tunnels in unfavourable terrain on the Osaka line. Such was the regard in which he was held by his colleagues that they secreted him aboard the opening run of the service the following year. By chance, the head of French railways (SNCF) Louis Armand happened to be visiting, met Shima and returned to Europe with the idea of the Train à Grande Vitesse

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(TGV). The Shinkansen was a runaway success story – as was the TGV – and he was soon showered with prizes from far afield. Thus rehabilitated, Shima was appointed to NASDA as a ‘big project, high-­ profile technocrat’. Shima and Itokawa had quite different, opposite styles. Yasushi Sato characterized Itokawa as activist, sharp, fearless in his dealings with political power; while Shima was modest, courteous and punctual, leaving the politics to others (Suga 1998; Sato 2012). Shima learned to deal with the politicians and officialdom too, but without the drama of Itokawa’s interventions. Neither Shima nor Itokawa were well known abroad, although Itokawa had achieved notoriety in Department of State files. The foreign face of the Japanese space programme was someone else altogether, paralleling the Soviet system whereby its public face was anyone but the chief designer who stayed behind in the background. He was Kankuro Kaneshige, cofounder of the Society of Automatic Control in the University of Tokyo (1947) and the Committee of Automatic Control in the Science Council of Japan (1957) and vice-chair of the Japan Academy of Sciences. He became head of the Space Development Council and led the delegation to the US-Japan Committee on Scientific Cooperation 23-6 June 1964 addressed by Secretary of State Dean Rusk. This was one of thee high-level consultative committees established in June 1961 between President Kennedy and prime minister Hayato Ikeda to strengthen cooperation between the two countries. On 24th January 1967 Kaneshige was invited before the US Congress Committee on Science and Astronautics panel on science and technology as the expert on spaceflight. That September, he wrote Space development in Japan, a book translated by NASA in its TTF series (Sturges 1964). Although by setting up NASDA it might seem to an outsider that the Japanese state had finally assumed control over the direction of its space programme, in reality NASDA was almost as independent – minded as the headstrong ISAS and, moreover, the government struggled to moderate the rivalry between the two.

3.3 The Exchange of Notes How would NASDA build rockets? Liquid-fuelled rockets had first been tested on Nijima island south of Tokyo bay in 1964. It was always Itokawa’s intention, in the fullness of time, to develop indigenous liquid-fuel rockets capable of putting technology satellites into low Earth orbit and

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communications satellites into geostationary orbit. His intentions, though, fell foul of complex diplomatic negotiations through the 1960s. First, there were obstacles to Japan developing a communications satellite, NASDA’s first ambition. The Americans had a worldwide monopoly on the launching and use of communications satellites called INTELSAT. A national security order with the understated title of ‘NSAM 334’ expressly prohibited the United States from providing technological assistance to to enable other countries to acquire their own communications satellites. Other countries could use INTELSAT on payment of royalties. The Americans refused to launch European-built communications satellites and only reluctantly lifted two European Symphonie satellites on the condition that they were experimental, not operational (as a result, the enraged French built the Ariane rocket so that Europe could launch its own). The same rule applied to Japan, a decision which would make it initially dependant on American communications satellites. Second, INTELSAT reflected a wider issue. Despite the world war being more than 20 years over, there was still American concern about Japan developing any launching capacity, with 1967 the pivotal year. Two years after the 1965 visit by Vice President Hubert Humphrey and NASA Administrator James Webb (Chap. 1), new American ambassador Alexis Johnson offered a way out, which was for Japan to buy the technology directly from the US. However, the majority view in Japanese industry and the research community was that Japan should develop its own capacities and follow a path of indigenization. Prime minister Eisaku Sato believed this too, but began to change his mind during a summit with President Johnson in November 1967. On the agenda was the return of the Okinawa and Ogasawara islands from American occupation and this became the price on offer for abandoning indigenization. The American briefing paper for their summit reiterated concerns about Japan having an independent space programme. However, by working with – or under – the Americans instead, Japan would save time and money and get ahead of China. Japan would be in position to launch its own satellites, with American rockets, under licence – though not communications satellites of course, for they were still off the table. This was formally proposed to prime minister Eisaku Sato by ambassador Alexis Johnson, ambassador to Japan, on 17th January 1968. This presented a challenge to the Japanese, who took 18 months to reply. In the Diet, the government view was that Japan was still planning to develop its own satellite, but was prepared to ask for assistance if needs be.

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The American position, though, was a function of different and even contradictory interests. Some, concerned with Japanese militarism, wanted to deny all technology to their former adversary. Others felt that Japan would be more amenable through a cooperative agreement. It was Alexis Johnson who was decisive, first as ambassador (1966–9) and then Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (1969–1974). He worked hard to forge what he considered to be a more positive Japanese-American relationship with concrete results, including the return of Okinawa. Others had a more instrumental purpose: the US under secretary for East Asia, Marshal Green, defined the objectives as to keep the Japanese away from weapons; spur the sale of American technology and hardware and; ‘get the US in on the ground floor of the Japanese space programme to ensure an American orientation’. These issues played out over 1968–9 and had still not been settled when Richard Nixon was elected President in November 1968. The American proposals of January 1968 did not see the light of day until 12th December 1968 when the ambassador published them, presumably to force a Japanese decision. The main sticking points were the prohibition on exporting technology to third countries and an American clause proposing classified ‘non-aggressive’ military space cooperation, which proved too much for the Diet. Japan finally agreed in July 1969 An exchange of notes constituting an agreement concerning cooperation in space activities for peaceful purposes. This enabled Japan to build its own liquid-fuel rocket, the N-I, paying ¥6bn (€38 m) for a licensed version of the American Thor rocket which would enable Japan to reach 24 hr. orbit. Japan was limited to launching its own satellites but not those of other countries and was prohibited from exporting this technology. The agreement defined the technologies to be transferred as unclassified, with the Thor Delta 68 rocket as the reference point. It was assumed that ISAS would continue to fire its own small solid-fuel rockets. This Exchange of notes governed Japanese rocketry for 20 years (Watanabe 2012; Parry 2010). Japan chafed at these restrictions and the Exchange of notes was modified in 1976 and 1980. The agreement was questioned in the Diet for giving the Americans too much influence, especially concerning INTELSAT.  The Americans added a rider that technology export would be limited to what was required to put a satellite in 24 hr. orbit. The Americans made it clear that all requests for assistance would be individually proofed fourfold: by the Office of Munitions Control, the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of NASA; and the departments of State and Defence. Even then, some would be black-­ boxed, which meant that they could not be dismantled, nor decomposed when they arrived. Some of these procedures were time-consuming, undermining the time benefit of importing these technologies.

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The Exchange of notes was a significant policy decision in the Japanese space programme, although it had been in the making for several years. The single path of autonomy was abandoned in favour of a twin track and twin institutions, ISAS and NASDA. Overall, though the strategy was one well in line with Japan’s overall plan for the economy and technology: learn, indigenize and diffuse. When appointed to head NASDA, Hideo Shima, in a newspaper interview argued against insularism and that necessary materials, components and materials should be imported – it was not necessary that the Japanese flag had to be on every component. Shima believed that imported technology should be assimilated and then used as a basis for independent capacity, as he had done with the railways. The American gift was politically controversial, leading to one of the few Diet debates on the space programme. The governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was in favour, the left against. The LDP tried to appease the left by claiming that Japan was repurposing American missiles for peaceful purposes. The strongest argument in favour was that it offered a fast track to critical technologies, Japan’s own National Aerospace Laboratory having made only slow progress toward the domestic liquid fuel Q rocket. Both Hideo Shima and minister Yasuhiro Nakasone argued that whilst they favoured the development of indigenous technology, it was pragmatic and faster, in the short term, to use the American. The new arrangement at least provided some certainty and on 1st October 1969, the Space Activities Commission (SAC) published a Space Development Programme to 1974, the high points being the launch of six scientific satellites by then and the development of the Q and N rockets. Shortly thereafter though, the SAC decided that time and money could be saved by cancelling the Q rocket and going straight to the larger N using the American technology. Engineers from McDonnell Douglas, makers of the Thor Delta, arrived in March 1971, giving formal talks and informal advice. Engineers from Rocketdyne oversaw engine tests. Japanese engineers travelled to the US for training and documentation which was quickly provided by NASA.  Most electrical components were bought from the US, but not antennæ because Japan had confidence in its own systems. Some of the implications of the agreement only became apparent later, the black box being the main irritant. The black box technologies were mainly guidance systems, gyros and the apogee motor. Significant elements of the Thor were supplied pre-assembled in the US and could not be opened. Only the Americans could install or operate them and if there were a problem, the Americans had to be called in to fix them, with no Japanese even watching. This did not promote trustworthiness. The Americans explained that the

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Japanese had access only to be unclassified technologies, which were subdivided into 24 licences. The Technology Advisory Group (TAG) was the predominant deciding body. The second irritant was the time reference point for the licence. The Thor rocket was continuously improved and given various Delta designators. The TAG set down the Thor Delta 58 as the reference model, but it was the least sophisticated version and able to launch only 156 kg to 24 hr. orbit. By 1972, NASDA’s Hideo Shima was already looking for an upgrade able to launch 250 kg and then 300 kg to 24 hr. orbit. He argued that as the technology improved, they should benefit accordingly. NASA’s Arnold Frutkin gave a straight ‘no’. The Americans insisted that the technology transfer was limited to what was available in 1969 and not the subsequent improvements. The Americans eventually agreed to Thor Delta 58 Castor II strap-on upgrades – but at an additional fee. The Japanese then asked for permission to improve the American rocket themselves, specifically to reverse-engineer the solid fuel strap-on assembly, the ablative cooling thrust chamber of the second stage engine, the second stage propellant tank, the fairing and the third stage motor. When the Space Activities Commission visited NASA to discuss this, NASA dug in its heels, arguing that Japan had benefitted enough already and that it was trying to use the agreement to develop an independent launching ability. In 1973, the United States eventually agreed to licensing that would lift the capacity of the N rocket to 24 hr. orbit to 250 kg. In 1974, Frutkin wrote of how NASA had done its best to slow knowhow and technology going to Japan and successfully kept the Japanese out of American plants where they might learn too much. On the Japanese side, Hideo Shima became increasingly exasperated with the loss of collegiality in the relationship and came to the conclusion that Japan would indeed have to develop its own technology itself (Maharaj 2013).

3.4 Building Japan’s American Rocket Licenses aside, NASDA’s first two tasks were to build the new N-I rocket and construct a launch site. The Mitsubishi company was made prime contractor, using first and second liquid-fuel stages on licence from Rockwell and the third solid-fuel stage on licence from Thiokol. Design and construction took place in the first half of the 1970s. For a launch site, when ISAS found out that NASDA was contemplating a site to which it would not have access, it refused to make Uchinoura available.

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Tanegashima island, in southern Japan had been considered but rejected by Hideo Itokawa when he sought a launching base for ISAS in 1959. In the end, this is where NASDA located, only 100 km south from Uchinoura, with similar advantages and disadvantages. Tanegashima is a picturesque island site, set in rolling hills alongside a rocky-sandy seashore where gentle waves roll in from the Pacific. The initial investment was ¥1.466bn (€13 m). Tracking stations were set up at Katsuura, Chiba on the Boso peninsula south east of Tokyo; and Okinawa. Local people in Tanegashima welcomed the new launch centre with rising sun flags. The railway was extended, 54  km of roads built and land was reclaimed for an expanded port. NASDA formed an outreach division to work with the local community, which welcomed visitors for launches, but there were long fallow periods in between them and they struggled to find ways to persuade visitors to stay, so the older people’s group opened a museum of traditional household and farming equipment. The fishermen objected here too and blockaded the site over 1967–8. To ensure that the message was heard they sailed into the exclusion zone. Agreement was reached in 1968 for direct financial compensation and to build local facilities (e.g. port development, hotel). This plan broke down, not being finally resolved until 1970 with agreement on two 45-day launching windows in spring and autumn. The N-I was first used to launch the an Engineering Test Satellite (ETS) or Kiku, which means ‘chrysanthemum’ in Japanese. The concept of the ETS series was to test out new technologies that would later be applied to the Japanese space industry operationally, mainly in the field of communications. The ETS series of new technology testing satellites remains a distinctive feature of the Japanese space programme to the present day. The small 83 kg, 80  cm diameter, 26-sided ETS I, Kiku 1 was launched on 9th September 1975 into an orbit swinging out to 1100 km, NASDA’s first satellite. Eighteen months later, the N-I achieved its prime objective when drum-shaped ETS II (Kiku 2) was the first Japanese satellite to reach geosynchronous orbit, although 60% of the satellite was American-made. Japan thus became only the third country in the world to reach geostationary orbit. Whatever the political merits of the licensing arrangement, it is doubtful if Japan could have made as swift progress without it. The next N-I satellite, Ume 1 (‘ume’ means ‘apricot’) was put into orbit by the N-I on 29th February 1976 to monitor radio waves in the ionosphere and use the results to forecast short-wave radio communication conditions. Ume was lucky to get into orbit at all: lightning postponed its launch to the very end of the month, with the range due to close on 1st March for the fishermen.

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Table 3.1  N-I launches 9 Sep 1975 29 Feb 1976 23 Feb 1977 16 Feb 1978 6 Feb 1979 17 Feb 1980

ETS I/Kiku 1 Ume 1 ETS II/Kiku 2 Ume 2 ECS 1/Ayame 1 ECS 2/Ayame 2

All from Tanegashima

Again delayed on the 28th, they were saved by 1976 being a leap year and got airborne on the 29th. Power failed in April and the backup 141  kg model was put into 975–1224 km, 69°, orbit as Ume 2 on 16th February 1978 where it worked successfully for five years. Of the next two ETS satellites, one focussed on solar arrays, attitude control systems and thermal protection, while the other carried a vidicon camera for Earth images, a magnetic attitude control system and an ion engine. Ayame 1 was an experimental, Japanese-built comsat, launched on the N-I on 6th February 1979, but there were reports later that it was lost when it collided with the third stage of the launcher. Ayame 2, was launched on the N-I in February 1980, a 260  kg cylindrical experimental comsat, but contact was lost when the apogee motor failed to fire, stranding it in a useless orbit. Under the black box rules, the US refused access to the subsequent investigation, so the Japanese could never determine the cause of the failure (Table 3.1).

3.5 Communications: Yuri, Sakura, JCSAT, Nstar, Superbird The Japanese archipelago is extensive, but satellites offered a relatively rapid and convenient means of providing both the main and remoter islands with television, telephone and data relays. The top early priority for NASDA was to develop such a system for the island chain, first with experimental satellites and then operational ones of growing complexity and performance. As already outlined, Japan was not permitted to launch its own communication satellites, nor would the United States launch all-Japanese ones. The workaround, agreed ninth October 1972, was for the United States to launch American-built satellites for Japanese companies. Here the Americans offered, for a commercial fee, a Delta launch from US soil of a 325 kg weather satellite

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built by Hughes and two communications satellites, built by Ford and General Electric, duly launched from Cape Canaveral over 1977–8. Even this caused a big row. The Japanese found out later that the cost only included insertion into Geostationary Transfer Orbit (typically only a few hundred kilometres by 36,000 km). This meant that they had to get what is called an apogee kick motor to raise the low point to circularize the orbit at 36,000 km, which would cost a further $15 m (¥2.1bn) on top of the existing $10 m (¥1.4bn) launch cost. That was only for the motor: NASA’s additional costs in assisting in the manoeuvre were also extra. The Japanese argued back and found a precedent whereby NASA had assisted Italy with the Sirio spacecraft in such a way, although this was denied. To get its network of communications satellites going, two types of satellite were commissioned, Yuri (BS, or Broadcasting Satellite), for direct broadcasting and Sakura (CS, or Communications Satellite) for television and telephone. To get past the INTELSAT rules, Japanese companies partnered with American satellite-makers. For the BS series, Toshiba paired with General Electric, later part of Lockheed Martin. For CS, Mitsubishi paired with Ford, later Loral. Some Japanese content was possible, in these cases 30% and 24% respectively. These early comsats were quite small by world standards. The first were launched by Delta from Cape Canaveral over 1977–8 (Appendix: Japan’s launches by other countries). Later, Japanese local content rose to 80–83% by 1988 (Yuri 3 was 83%) to the point that they could be described as domestic Japanese satellites built by Toshiba, Mitsubishi Electrical, Nippon Electrical Company (NEC) and the others. It became a substantial, high-tech, domestic sector. With BS 1, Yuri, launched on a Delta in April 1978, Japan became the first country to experiment with direct commercial television Direct To Home (DTH), the overall cost of the experiment being ¥28.8bn (€257 m). It was followed by the BS 2 series (Yuri 2). Here, the aim was to provide operational DTH to 420,000 people in the remoter islands which did not have television, using small dish receivers less than 1 m in diameter. Nothing was taken to chance and ahead of the tests, the home receivers were subjected to the full range of weather in the Japanese archipelago, from typhoons in the southern islands to the harsh winter snows of the northern island of Hokkaido. Although CS Sakura carried television, its role was also to build satellite-­ based telephone systems. The first, American launched on 15th December 1977 was 3.51 m tall, 2.18 m diameter, weighing 676 kg, with six transponders, the first satellite to use quasi-millimetre waves to transmit signals. This paved the way in 1983 for an operational system on Japanese launchers providing general area coverage, the Sakura 2 series, the first to use the

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high-capacity K-band frequencies (20–30 GHz), able to handle 4000 phone calls at a time. Sakura 3A, launched on the later H-I rocket on 19th February 1988, was double the weight, 1100  kg and provided telecommunications channels for the police. The pioneering early years of Japanese satellite communications were dominated by the BS Yuri and CS Sakura series (Appendix for list of launchings). In the 1980s, Europe broke the INTELSAT monopoly by building its own launcher, Ariane. Japan was thus enabled to shop around, specifically to contract with Europe for launches. Japan liberalised its own market in two initiatives (27th April 1984 and 1st April 1985) enabling Japanese broadcasting companies to buy foreign satellites directly, for example from Hughes, RCA and Ford. Liberalization was confirmed by the heads of government Nakasone – Reagan meeting of 2nd January 1985 and Abe – Shultz ministerial on 10th January 1986, called the Market Oriented Sector Selective (MOSS) talks. By the late 1980s, the Japanese archipelago was connected by an impressive series of communications satellites of ever-greater local content to the point that they were largely homemade. On 25th May 1989, it all fell apart. That day, the United States accused Japan of unfair trading, invoking §301 of its trade law. The legislation had been in place since 1974, but §301 had been strengthened in August 1988 to address several specific issues with Japan, in descending order computers, wood products and satellites. Japan was accused of exporting cheap goods, especially computers, to open American markets whilst maintaining barriers to American entry to the domestic Japanese market. In the case of communications satellites, orders were always won by the big hitters of Japan. The Japanese argued that they had to provide some protection for their own companies, because small numbers meant that they could never achieve the economies of scale of American satellite makers with much larger order books and client base (Cass 1991; Masahiko et al. undated). Granted the MOSS talks and forthcoming direct buys of American satellites, which were believed to have resolved these issues, the unilateral American move shocked Japan. For their part, the Americans felt that their patience over a $50bn (¥7.2 trillion) trade deficit had run out. §301, also called ‘super 301’, was a not-well-known and little-used legal provision which could be used to identify an ‘unfair trader’ and if remedies were not made to American satisfaction, it could impose sanctions. Japan faced a choice between letting the Americans into the Japanese market in satellites, computers and forest products – or face high import duties on its electronic goods going to the US, principally household computers, typically made by the very same company. The worried Keidanren appealed to

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government for investment to re-equip the big satellite makers. The Japanese argued that a level playing field with the US would wipe out Japanese satellite building, while the Americans accused Japan of protection. Japan tried the argument that its communications satellites were still at a research and development phase, so could not yet compete on the open market, but the Americans were adamant. On 10th April 1990, Japan yielded, confirmed in a formal decision of 15th June 1990. This meant that the Japanese government or its agencies or commercial companies must put satellite contracts out on a level playing field open tender, with American companies free to compete for these tenders on the same basis as Japanese companies. Some analysts argued deservedly so, because the companies concerned (e.g Melco and NEC/Toshiba) had become lazy and uncompetitive in a protected market. §301 was the most controversial trade issue of its day, widely criticized abroad but hailed at home as protecting the United States from unfair competition and the crowbar that opened protected overseas markets. The Act was not widely applied, but Japan was the single country most adversely affected. Many Japanese were outraged as being treated not as an ally, but as a dangerous enemy. Japanese industry was traumatized. Because American companies built large numbers of communications satellites each year, they could achieve economies of scale and production – and lower prices – not possible for Japanese companies. The outcome was predictable: on a level playing field, it was a death sentence for the Japanese satellite-­ building industry and its downstream industries. The turnover of the Japanese space industry fell by almost half and the number of employees fell from almost 9000 in 1997 to 5100 in 2008. The space industry contracted by size 40%; and employment 33%. From thereon, almost all Japanese communications satellites were built in the United States. Melco, Toshiba and NEC lost 20–25 satellites that they might have expected to build over almost two decades. Toshiba left the market altogether. The American General Electric company now built the Yuri BS-3 series. The CS-4 satellite communications project, to have gone to Melco, was cancelled. Not until 2008 did a Japanese company again win a contract to build a satellite, when Melco won the contract to build Superbird 7 and Mitsubishi Heavy Industry the contract to launch it on the H-IIA. As the communications revolution intensified in the 1990s, the pace of deployment of communications satellites picked up, except that Japan’s satellites were now contracted to the United States and to American and European launchers. The CS, Sakura series evolved into a new generation of satellites called Nstar, with the American Loral and Hughes companies the contractors

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and Europe’s Ariane winning the launch award. These were large satellites, weighing four tonnes, with 26 transponders. For example, the Hughes 393 was a 10 m tall, 3.66 m diameter drum with a 2.4 m antenna able to produce a beam to cover not only the Japanese islands but audiences further afield in Asia. By the end of the century, two main broadcasting providers dominated: JCSAT and Superbird. JCSAT was developed by the Tokyo-based Japanese Communications Satellite Company (hence JCSAT). The first JCSAT was launched by Ariane 4 on 6th March 1989. Thereafter JCSAT used different rockets and satellite-makers. For example, JCSAT 9 was a Lockheed Martin A2100 launched on the Russian/Ukrainian Zenit 3SL.  JCSAT 11 used a Russian Proton rocket. JCSAT 14 used the SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher, whose reusable first stage landed later on a drone in the Atlantic. The satellites themselves were modernized: JCSAT 17 was a new model, a Lockheed Martin LM2100 design, with S-band, Ku-band, C-band and a 18 m mesh reflector, designed to carry high volumes of bandwidth and traffic. From 1989 to 2019, 18 JCSATs were launched, the dominant communications satellite. Its rival, Superbird, was owned by the Space Communications Corporation, a Mitsubishi company. The first Superbird was launched into 24 hr. orbit on Ariane 4 in 1989, being followed by Superbird B on in 1992 and Superbird C in 1997. Superbird served not only the Japanese archipelago but Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Malaysia and China. From 1989 to 2018, six Superbirds were put into orbit. The three leading end-of-century providers (JCSAT, Superbird, N-Star) later merged to form the SkyPerfect company, which became Asia’s largest satellite operator with a fleet by 2020 of 16 satellites, now Japan’s main provider of multichannel, pay-per-view television and other satellite-based communications (e.g. emergency, disaster, maritime, aviation, mobile). The NStar, JCSAT and Superbird satellites, mainly European and American launched, are listed in the appendix. By this stage, though, the combination of domestic state stimulus and private development had introduced Japan to satellite-based television almost faster than any other country. This concluded the initiative in the early 1970s for Japan to launch communications satellites, the idea behind the N-I. However, the domestic Japanese satellite-building industry was perhaps the largest single victim of an unequal Japan-American relationship that had set the framework of the space programme from the beginning.

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3.6 Introducing the N-II The N-I had drawbacks. It was able to send only about 130 kg to geostationary orbit. This was fine for experimental purposes, but most operational satellites in that orbit by the late 1970s required a lifting capacity of at least twice that amount. Moreover, by the time the N-I was developed, it was already well out of date by global standards. The N-I first flew in 1975, but most of its technology (e.g. the guidance system) dated to the 1960s. No sooner was it flying than Japanese space experts were thinking of the need for a more powerful vehicle and this was approved in September 1976. Again, a licensing arrangement was entered into with the United States. Prime contractor was Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. 1981 saw the introduction of the N-II launcher. For the Japanese, the N-II was an essential part of their efforts to place larger communications and weather satellites into 24  hr. orbit for the 1980s and reduce reliance on American Deltas. The N-II more than doubled Japan’s ability to reach 24 hr. orbit, from 130 kg to 350 kg – but still very little by world standards. Just as the N-I had been based on an earlier American launcher, the Thor, the N-II was based on a more recent version of the same Thor, the Thor Delta, but was still essentially an American rocket with a Japanese name. Compared to the N-I, the N-II featured a number of improvements, principally nine solid-fuel strap-ons (rather than three), a longer first stage with 34% more capacity and a new motor for the second stage (the Aerojet AJ10-118F). The third stage consisted of a solid fuel Thiokol TE-M-364-4 motor, with a propellant weight of 1.1 tonnes and thrust for 44 sec. The N-II was built in Mitsubishi’s factory in Nagoya, but the third stage supplied directly from the United States. The first launch of the N-II was an ETS test satellite (ETS IV, Kiku 3) on 11th February 1981. The launch was considered such an important moment that just before the first N-II went up, five members of NASDA’s ruling council went to a Tokyo Shinto shrine to pray. The mission objectives were to test the operation of the test satellite, the generation of electrical power and the operation of the N-II launcher. Later, the rocket was used for launching weather and communications satellites to 24 hr. orbit, concluding with Japan’s first marine observation satellite. It was a test of an indigenous communications satellite, but a ‘test’ because of the INTELSAT rules which meant that it could not be offered commercially.

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3.7 Watching Earth’s Weather Paralleling the development of communications satellites, the second early achievement of NASDA’s space programme was the orbiting of a system of weather satellites. These were especially important for Japan, being both an island nation and one periodically affected by typhoons. Japan had a long history of meteorology and it was forecaster and Esperantist Wasaburo Oishi (1874–1950) who discovered the jet stream in the 1920s. He published his work in Esperanto, which meant that few people noticed and the jet stream had to rediscovered many years later. The only people who took notice were the Japanese military, who in the world war dispatched balloons with incendiaries to ignite forest fires along the western American seaboard. Although their use seems obvious now, it took some time for the potential of satellites for weather forecasting to be realized, the key moment being 1977 when the World Meteorological Organization promoted the Global Atmospheric Research Programme (GARP) to which Europe, Japan and the US were key contributors. The objectives were to measure, from 24 hr. orbit, wind direction and speed and sea surface temperature using visible and infrared radiometers. The US Weather Bureau was a driving force and it included Japanese scientists such as Akira Kasahara. GARP was a runaway success, providing synoptic data on a large scale, banishing the skeptics at a stroke and laid the foundation of modern global forecasting. Japan’s contribution, its Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS), was built for Nippon Electric by Hughes and based on the American contribution, was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta 2914 for ¥8.7bn (€55  m) on 14th July 1977 and positioned at 140°E, just south of Tokyo itself. It was called Himawari, or ‘sunflower’, a 130 kg cylindrical satellite 3 m long, 1.9 m diameter and covered with solar cells at the side. Himawari’s aim was to carry out a global weather watch, collect and distribute weather data and monitor solar particles. Himawari was stationed in such a way that it could scan the planet from Hawaii in the east to Pakistan in the west with its Visible and Infrared Spin-scan Radiometer, providing high resolution visible images of the Earth every 30 min. It also carried a Space Environment Monitor to measure ionized gases entering the Earth’s atmosphere. A second generation GMS was launched four years later, this time by the N-II launcher. GMS 2, Himawari 2. GMS 2, like its predecessor, was drumshaped, with observation camera and vizor on top, on which rested the two spacecraft antenna. The main instrument for the series was a Visible Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer (VISSR), which scanned the entire planet: its first picture, relayed in early September 1981, showed the swirling clouds of the

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Pacific ocean, Australia filling the bottom left side of the globe. Placed at 140°E, GMS 2 transmitted pictures eight times a day until November 1983 when its electrical motor began to break down. When GMS 2 finished operations, the Japanese weather agency brought GMS 1 out of retirement at 160°E to take over its work until GMS 3 could be launched. GMS 3, Himawari 3, also built by Hughes for Nippon Electric NEC, followed in August 1984, providing, every 30  min, infrared and visible light views of Japan, China, southeast Asia and Australia. The first attempt to launch GMS 4, Himawari 4 from Tanegashima failed on 8th August 1989 when there was a rare pad abort. The computer detected a potential valve failure in the first stage motor just after it ignited and halted the countdown in time. A second attempt a month later on 5th September succeeded. The satellite was placed in geostationary transfer orbit 16 hr. after launch and eventually manœuvred into position at 150°E. The last GMS was Himawari 5. It provided full pictures of the Earth’s disc every 25 min in one visible and three infrared bands and was designed to measure sea temperatures and water vapour more precisely than ever before. It had a resolution of 1.25 km (visible light) and 5 km (infrared light) respectively. Subsequently Himawari doubled up with the Multifunctional Transport Satellite (MTS) (also called MTSAT), owned by the Civil Aviation Bureau with the Meteorological Agency. MTS was designed for weather forecasting with air traffic control, carrying one visible and four infrared channels of (Advanced Meteorological Imager). The first was built by Loral (MTS IR), the second by Mitsubishi (MTS 2) and named respectively Himawari 6 and 7. The Mitsubishi version was 4.6 tonnes, 4 m by 4 m by 6 m with a 30 m solar panel on one side of the box and a long boom with conical tail on the other. As with communications satellites, the system had moved a long way from small, experimental satellites to large, operational, routine observations (Table 3.2). Table 3.2  N-II launches 11 Feb 1981 10 Aug 1981 3 Sep 1982 4 Feb 1983 5 Aug 1983 23 Jan 1984 2 Aug 1984 12 Feb 1986 19 Feb 1987 All from Tanegashima

ETS IV/Kiku 3 GMS 2/Himawari 2 ETS III/Kiku 4 Sakura 2A Sakura 2B BS 2A/Yuri 2A GMS 3/Himawari 3 BS 2B/Yuri 2B MOS 1A/Momo 1A

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3.8 H-Rocket: Introducing Liquid Hydrogen With the N series, NASDA accomplished its original tasks of building a launcher, reaching 24  hr. orbit and developing prototype communications and weather satellites. The next series of rockets, the H series, attempted to build on the success of the American – licensed N-I and N-II. The purpose of the H series was to double again the payload to 24  hr. orbit, this time to 550 kg, to replace – insofar as possible – American technology with equipment designed and built in Japan, to make Japan independent as a launching country. The operation of the black box system really irritated the Japanese, building pressure for kokusanka, so the H-I was 84% domestic. The Exchange of notes still applied, so the American licence meant that the H-I still could not be offered to launch foreign satellites and thus provide some additional income. Approval to begin the project was given in February 1981. As well as continuing the communications satellite programme, another objective was to widen the range of satellites that could be orbited, with a specific focus on Earth observations. The first stage, main engine and strap-on rockets were American, with McDonnell Douglas responsible for the airframe, Rockwell the engines, Thiokol the solid rocket boosters and on the second stage TRW the Reaction Control System. The second stage was not only home made, but for the first time used hydrogen fuel. Central to the H idea was the introduction of a hydrogen-­ powered cryogenic upper stage. Hydrogen-powered upper stages give considerable extra boost for payloads destined for 24 hr. orbit or deep space. The technology is called cryogenic because it involves handling the hydrogen fuel at extremely low temperatures (the boiling point for liquid hydrogen is −253  °C, compared to −183  °C for liquid oxygen). The low temperatures, combined with the explosiveness of hydrogen, posed difficult engineering challenges. The United States had developed the first hydrogen-power upper stage, the Centaur, in the 1960s, though not without difficulty. For this challenging enterprise, the two wings of the Japanese space programme, ISAS and NASDA, came together. Although ISAS had focussed on solid rockets, as far back as 1972, Professor M Nagatomo had undertaken preliminary work on a seven tonne cryogenic upper stage for the Mu solid-­ fuel rocket and in the late 1970s had carried out model tests of its engine at the Noshiro test centre. The Space Activities Commission formally asked ISAS to assist in the building a larger engine in cooperation with NASDA. The go-ahead for a cryogenic, hydrogen power upper stage was given in 1982. The new, restartable motor was called the LE-5, the contract being awarded to Mitsubishi. The 255 kg LE-5 was designed to develop 10.5 tonnes of thrust, with a specific impulse of 447 sec and a combustion pressure of 37 atmospheres.

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In a typical launch profile, six of the H-I’s solid rocket strap-ons ignited at lift-off. These burned out at an altitude of 4 km when the other three strap-­ ons ignited. All nine were jettisoned 85 sec into the mission to tumble into the Pacific Ocean. The first stage burned out at 4 min 30 sec. Then, 8 sec later, now soaring above the atmosphere, the second stage would light up. The payload fairing at the top would come off 5 min 14 sec into the mission. The liquid hydrogen second stage would typically burn for 363 sec, bringing the vehicle to a velocity of 7.8 km/sec. After a 22 sec coast, the solid third stage would light for a burn of about a minute to achieve a geostationary transfer orbit, following which the payload would separate 26  min after takeoff. A further minute’s burn would circularize the orbit. The H-I made its first flight on 12th August 1986. A splendid white rocket, with the Japanese flag and Nippon written in black on its side, it took into orbit three payloads on its first mission – an experimental geodetic satellite, an amateur radio satellite and a magnetic bearing flywheel experimental system. The experimental geodetic payload, Ajisei (meaning hydrangea) was a 685 kg passive satellite designed to improve triangulation measurements of the surface of the Earth from an altitude of 1500 km. Built by Kawasaki, it entered a circular orbit of 1479 km. In the shape of a 2.15 m ball, it was covered with 120 glassy reflectors designed to beam back both laser and light beams. Launched with it was Fuji, a 26-sided 50 kg amateur radio satellite only 50 cm across. Next up was ETS V, Kiku 5, a 550 kg satellite launched by H-I in August 1987 to 24  hr. orbit, a technology development satellite to test the use of C-band and L-band transponders for ships and aircraft and was placed at 150°E. It was the first to use an indigenous kick motor. In an experiment in Pacific regional cooperation, it was used to transmit educational programmes to Fiji and Papua New Guinea. The apogee motor developed by ETS V was later used for the BS-3 series of broadcasting satellites, a good example of how the engineering programme paved the way for a commercial application.

3.9 Earth and Marine Observations: Momo During the 1960s, an awareness grew of the potential of space observation platforms to watch the seas and land masses for remote sensing. Satellites could be used to make maps, spot pollution, find fish, assess crops and study water resources. Application of imaging data from satellites could be used in thousands of ways to assist agricultural, marine and economic development. The United States had launched the world’s first remote sensing satellite,

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Landsat in 1972, so successful that the series was still running 50 years later, with Landsat 9 launched in 2021. In July 1975 Japan established a Remote Sensing Technology Centre, RESTEC to lead the country’s endeavours in Earth resources work. Three years later, Japan built an Earth Observation Centre (EOC) at Hatoyama to receive Landsat data, operational from 1979. In 1978, the Space Activities Commission took the decision that Japan should develop its own land and sea observation satellites and move away from dependance on American data. Preliminary designs were carried out in 1979-80 and the final design was settled in 1981. The first Japanese remote sensing satellite was the Marine Observation Satellite, MOS, also called MOS 1A, built by NEC. Weighing 750 kg, it was designed to carry four instruments to study the surface of the Earth’s oceans. Once in orbit, it was renamed Momo, or ‘peach blossom’. It was launched into 903–917 km orbit, 99.1°, period 103 min on 19th February 1987 on the last N-II rocket. Momo was a box-shaped satellite with one solar panel. It carried a 70 kg multi spectral electronic self-scanning radiometer using a charge coupled device; a 54 kg microwave scanning radiometer to observe temperature and water vapour and a 25 kg visible and infrared thermal radiometer. The scanning radiometer could compile a coloured sea map which could indicate pollution. Momo was able to measure atmospheric water vapour, ice floes, plankton, ocean currents and sea temperature. A gas jet system was devised to maintain station-keeping on orbit. A data collection system was installed to collect information from automatic monitoring systems and relay them back to ground control. As it crossed the oceans, its multispectrum radiometer covered a swath of 100  km, its microwave scanning radiometer 317  km and the visible and infrared radiometer 1500 km. This orbit made 14 revolutions a day, repeating the ground track every 17 days, perfect for observing changes below. Tracking was done by Tsukuba Ground Centre, with support from other tracking stations at Katsuura, Masuda and Okinawa. MOS data were received by Thailand (Bangkok), Showa Base, Antarctica (National Institute of Polar Research); Alice Springs, Australia and Prince Albert and Gatineau (Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing). The satellite worked for two and a half years until June 1989. It sent back outstanding pictures of tropical storms. Using false colour imaging, the swirl of a typhoon could be made out in dark blue colours, surrounded by red sea, the red colour being due to the warm temperatures from which typhoons sucked up their moisture. Right in the centre of the typhoon could be seen a small, 4 km wide red spot – the eye of the hurricane. Other pictures from Momo showed the snows on the top of mountains, floating ice around the

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northern Japanese islands and a volcanic plume streaming from Mount Fuji. Photographs of the Antarctic ice sheet were relayed to the Japanese observation party at Showa base. Three years later, the second marine observation satellite, MOS-1B or Momo 1B, was launched by H-I from Tanegashima on 7th February 1990, rising on a pillar of smoke into Pacific clouds as waves lapped the island launch site. The satellite was the backup model for MOS 1A.  Also launched into virtually identical orbit with MOS were Orizuru (meaning ‘beginning’), a deployable boom-and-umbrella test and Fuji 2, an amateur radio satellite. The French ground station at Kourou on the south American coast picked up the new 780  kg Momo on its first pass and not long afterward so did the Japanese stations. Within an hour, the 5.2 m long solar panel had unfurled and the satellite began a 60-day period of checkout. MOS 1B carried a dish-­ shaped microwave scanning radiometer, an X-band antenna and a tube-­ shaped multispectrum electronic self-scanning radiometer. Its instruments were able to identify red tide (jellyfish infestations), the distribution of snow and ice and volcanic ash. Detailed colour maps of sea temperatures were compiled for the seas around the Japanese islands, blue for cold currents and red for warm sea. MOS-1B continued to operate until 1996 when it was closed down after a battery failure. The 50 kg Orizuru was an unusual test. The idea was to test out, in miniature, the deployment of free-flying microgravity platforms from orbital stations. These would park some distance from the station, carry out experiments in zero gravity unperturbed by space station operations and then return. A special purpose of the test was to verify if umbrella devices could be used, combined with atmospheric drag, to manœuvre back to an orbital station. Over a week, Orizuru deployed its boom 34 times and its umbrella 52 times in what was apparently a successful test.

3.10 JERS Fuyo: Introduction of Space-Borne Radar The next step after MOS was a land observation Earth resources satellite. This was JERS, or the Japanese Earth Resources Satellite, was also the first radar-­ based such satellite, the American Seasat having paved the way in 1978. 96% of the satellite was built domestically. Weighing 1.4 tonnes, it was equipped with a 12 m by 2.5 m Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and multi-spectral imaging radiometers. Because of the technical complexities involved, the design period was unusually long, 12 years. It was launched successfully on 11th February 1992 from Tanegashima, the H-I heading due south toward a 568 km orbit repeating its ground path every 44 days. Separation took place over Argentina 50 min after take-off and the satellite was duly renamed Fuyo.

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Problems arose when the SAR failed to deploy because one of six pins holding the antenna in place stuck. It seems that extreme cold may have contributed to the problem, because when the satellite was pointed at the Sun several weeks later the pin suddenly popped open. Even when it did work, radar images were spoilt by stripes appearing on the pictures, a problem eventually overcome by programming them out during processing. When this was done, ground controllers were able to get razor-sharp images of Mount Fuji volcano and the Japanese islands. Later, its instruments were used for land surveys, studies of fisheries and agriculture, natural resources work and disaster prevention. Fuyo was able to track forest fires in Mongolia and the crustal movement of the Earth near Iwate volcano. The main receiving centre for Fuyo information was the Earth Observation Centre at Hatoyama, responsible for processing, distribution and building an archive. The centre had three 11.5 m dishes to receive signals. Fuyo relayed stored data both to Hatoyama and the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and to a further ten Earth stations equipped to receive real-time data  – Kumamoto in Kyushu, Japan; Bangkok, Thailand; Showa Base, Antarctica; Fucino, Italy; Kiruna, Sweden; Maspolamos, Spain; Tromso, Norway; Gatineau and Prince Albert, Canada; and Beijing, China. By the late 1990s, the centre had built up considerable expertise through its handling of data from Japan’s MOS 1 and 1B, JERS and ADEOS, Europe’s ERS, the United States’ Landsat 5 and France’s SPOT. Fuyo failed and was shut down in 1998, having far exceeded its design lifetime. By this stage, ground stations had received 90,000 photographs and 140,000 radar images. The batteries started to malfunction in October and then two of the three gyros switched themselves off. It was unable to acquire the Sun and, starved of electrical power, the electricity system failed and it burned up in December 2001. Fuyo brought the H-I series to and end (Table 3.3). Table 3.3  H-I launches 12 Aug 1986 27 Aug 1987 19 Feb 1988 16 Sep 1988 5 Sep 1989 7 Feb 1990

28 Aug 1990 25 Aug 1991 11 Feb 1992 All from Tanegashima

Ajisei Fuji ETS V/Kiku 5 Sakura 3A Sakura 3B GMS 4/Himawari 4 MOS 1B/Momo 1B Orizuru Fuji 2 BS 3A/Yuri 3A BS 3B/Yuri 3B JERS/Fuyo

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3.11 H-II Rocket: ‘Most Advanced of Its Kind’ In the 1970s and 1980s, using American-based rockets, the N-I, N-II and H-I, the Japanese laid the groundwork for a modern space programme, launching technology test satellites (ETS), communications and weather satellites and then the first remote sensing satellites for marine and then land. By now, Japan was in the position to develop an entirely indigenously designed and built rocket, NASDA’s final declaration of launching independence. There was a growing confidence in NASDA and in the space industry that it was ‘made in Japan’ time.

H-II. CC Souravmishra 266

Approval was given for the project by SAC in July 1984, aimed at first launch in eight years, using only indigenous technology, intended to be at the same design levels as the best of world launchers. Being fully indigenous, the

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H-II could now be legitimately offered on the world launcher market without breaching licensing arrangements and generate income for Japan. To do this, the government in 1990 set up a complex structure in which NASDA funded the H-II’s development, but the rocket was built and marketed by a newly created Rocket Systems Corporation (RSC) of the 75 companies most involved for a fee, the company then selling it abroad or, in the domestic market, selling it back to NASDA for use on a mission-by-mission basis. NASDA would design and develop the rocket, but the RSC would manufacture, own, operate, market it and sell it, a public-private idea modelled in the United States. The RSC included many staff formerly with NASDA.  RSC believed that the H rockets could capture 25% of the world’s commercial launch business. The H-II was also madly expensive, one of the consequences of the Japanese drive for quality assurance and elaborate testing. The engineers did not want the H-II to be the first Japanese rocket to explode and it was not, but they were later criticized for their over indulgence in using expensive materials and multiple backup systems. The Japanese rocketeers also suffered from the smaller size of the Japanese market which meant that economies of scale available in the United States were not possible in Japan, so it was unlikely to reach the scale of production to make it profitable. The H-II had an unusual design feature: both the first and second stage were fuelled by liquid hydrogen. To improve reliability, a similar engine was used on both stages, the LE-7 on the lower, the LE-5 on the upper stage, powerful with 1100kN thrust. The LE-5 could be turned off and on, a considerable advantage in getting payloads into the right orbit and could be tilted for pitch and yaw. The building of the cryogenic fuel tanks posed special engineering challenges. The tanks were built by Mitsubishi with the assistance of the Sciaky Corporation of Chicago and used the same alloy as that employed for the American space shuttle, aluminium 2219. Temperatures were kept down by foam-resin insulation. Additional thrust was provided by two large solid rocket boosters, like those of the American Titan IV and the space shuttle. The nozzles on the solid rocket boosters could be swivelled 5°. The H-II was imposing and the authoritative American journal Aviation Week & Space Technology, described it as ‘the most advanced expendable launch vehicle sitting on the pad today in its integration of modern materials, electronics, computers and propulsion’. When the Americans came to construct their Delta 3 in the mid-1990s, they used fuel tanks made in Japan: technology transfer between Japan and the United States was now flowing the other way. With the H-II, Japan was able to send 10 tonnes into low Earth orbit or four tonnes to

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geostationary transfer orbit. The latter figure was better than China’s Long March 2E (3.4 tonnes), the American Delta 3 or Atlas 2AS (3.8 tonnes), but inferior to the European Ariane 4 or 5 (4.5 and 6.8 tonnes respectively) or Russia’s Proton (4.8 tonnes). For all its innovation, the H-II had an unhappy development history. The LE-7 was Japan’s first closed-cycle staged combustion engine, matching the Russian RD-0120. A series of fires, explosions, welding problems and mechanical failures put the programme two years behind schedule. In 1989, a bad mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen caused an engine fire which destroyed the test stand. A fire then broke out during one of the early test firings of the engine in July 1990, melting piping and pumps. In April 1991, four test firings of the first stage engine failed. On the last one, the engine shut down 14 sec into a 350 sec firing, having failed to reach adequate combustion pressure. On 9th August 1991, there was an explosion when an engine valve burst causing an explosion and the death of a technician. The main problem appeared to be the turbopumps, whose job was to supply high-pressure propellants to the combustion chamber. In 1992, the LE-7 again failed 5 sec into a major engineering test and caught fire because of a fuel leak. Then in June 1992, during a 10 sec firing of the LE-7, fire broke out 5 sec after ignition when a weld broke, permitting liquid hydrogen to escape. Although the fire was extinguished in a minute, it was so intense that the engine and turbopump broke away from its mounting to fall 23 m into the water cooling pond! The following year, the LE-7 aborted a test firing on the stand 132  sec into a 350 sec run, not operating smoothly until the summer. Typical of Japanese thoroughness was the use of a purpose-built sounding rocket, the TR-1, to test elements of the H-II design. The TR-1 was a H-II quarter scale model, though it had to be equipped with large rocket fins unnecessary for the H-II itself. These rockets were 14.3  m long, 1.1  m in diameter and weighed 11.9 tonnes. The purpose of the launchings was to obtain important data on rocket stresses, pressures, heating and exhaust plumes, as well as to test the mechanisms for the release of the strap-on boosters. The first TR-1 test was made on 6th September 1988. A second mission, using dummy solid rocket booster strap-ons to simulate the real ones, was launched 27th January 1989 and recovered from the sea several hours later. The programme concluded with a third launch on 20th August 1990. These rehearsals provided valuable testing information – but pushed costs up. The H-II eventually went for its first real test on 3rd February 1994. As if to lay to rest the ghost of its unhappy history behind, H-II rose smoothly from the ultramodern Yoshinobu complex of the Tanegashima launch centre on an ambitious space experiment. The twin solid rocket boosters dropped off 1 min

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34 sec into the mission at an altitude of 37 km. The first stage engines burned out at 6 min when the H-II was 227 km high and 630 km downrange, by which stage the vehicle was nearing Christmas island. The second stage burned for 5 minutes. Executive director Tomihumi Godai was still in the control room when a congratulatory phone call came through from prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa. The H-II placed in orbit a 2.4 tonne prosaically termed ‘vehicle evaluation payload’, more poetically Myojo. Its role was to monitor the rocket’s performance, acceleration and vibration and circle the Earth in a high altitude trajectory for four days. Myojo was a box-shaped object carrying 1.5 tonnes of water which it pressurized, depressurized and re-pressurized in a series of tests. Also carried was a spaceplane experiment, OREX (Chap. 5). For Japan, the successful launch was a great moment. ‘First large launch vehicle using only domestic technologies’ trumpeted the media. The H-II rivalled the best of what the Americans, the Russians and the Europeans could offer and it had all been developed at home this time. The second H-II launching though was a disappointment. The payload was the sixth engineering technology satellite, ETS VI or Kiku 6, which was intended to test lasers (the first such Japanese tests), advanced telecommunications systems and new propulsion methods paving the way for data relay satellites and an operational ion engine rated at 23mN and designed to work for 6500 hours. It was also much larger, the Space Activities Commission having pressed for satellites to be heavier and more capable, beyond their 550 kg norm to 1500 kg or so. On the first launch attempt, the rocket engines failed to fire. When the H-II did get off the pad on 28th August 1994, the ¥52.75bn (€471 m) 1.6 tonne satellite was left in an initial 236–36,338 km orbit instead of a geosynchronous one. The apogee burn had generated only 10% of the thrust needed. Despite the setback, Kiku 6 was able to test its ion engine (it reached the designed level of thrust, 23mN), inter-satellite communications systems, new nickel hydrogen batteries, electro-thermal-hydrazine thrust and test portable phones. The remaining thrust was used to raise the perigee to 8560 km by the end of November. Because the orbit passed through the Van Allen radiation belts, the solar cells and electrical equipment degraded quite rapidly. Making a virtue of necessity, the opportunity was used to relay information on electrons and protons in the radiation belts. Kiku 6 also provided communications for relief efforts after the Kobe Earthquake when other communications were down. The mission ended in January 1996. The apogee motor which failed was a blackbox American one and the Americans refused, on grounds of national security, to share the technical information on what might have gone wrong.

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3.12 H-II Brings Ill-Luck, Uncertainty The Kiku 6 failure began a run of ill-luck which dogged the Japanese space programme for the rest of the 1990s. It was no consolation that just across the sea, China went through a similar experience. First, Japan lost the HYFLEX mini-shuttle at sea after a suborbital mission, though on a different launcher. The next year saw the loss of the ADEOS 1 satellite and in 1998 the placing of another, COMETS in a virtually useless orbit. These four losses were valued at a dazzling ¥202.6bn (€1809 m). The Science and Technology Agency publicly criticized the use of large, expensive satellites where a single fault could jeopardize a multi billion yen project, arguing instead for smaller, cheaper, less ambitious projects where a single failure would prove less costly and impactful. In a programme where quality control was emphasized throughout, this was an alarming turn of events so the government established a high-level panel to examine the problems. Formed of eight Japanese and eight foreigners, the panel was headed up by Jacques-Louis Lions, president of the French Academy of Sciences and Tokyo University professor Jiro Kondo. The panel reported in 1999: it was unable to find any common thread in these failures, a frustrating conclusion but not uncommon to similar investigations of runs of disasters in other countries at the same time. The panel had many positive comments to make on NASDA, such as the performance of the H-II and the advanced technology used on Japanese communications and meteorological satellites. This had been achieved with limited resources. The panel noted that although NASDA’s annual spending had risen from ¥50bn (€317 m) in the 1970s to ¥100bn (€636 m) in the 1980s and ¥200bn (€1.2bn) in the 1990s, it had declined as a proportion of Japan’s gross domestic product from 0.04% to 0.035%. Staffing had not increased since the 1980s, even though the responsibilities and commitments of the agency had grown. NASDA’s budget was less than half that of the Europe’s and less than a tenth of that of NASA. Looking at this another way, much had been achieved with little. Critically, the panel found poor lines of management communication, a lack of clear responsibilities in project management, the need for more technical resources in some projects and for improved systems of quality assurance. It criticized NASDA for taking on too many projects, for failing to concentrate its resources and for being the junior partner in too many international projects. The programme was failing to generate commercial benefits at home: although Japan had led many of the new communications technologies, Japanese companies still preferred to buy in foreign communications satellites. After §301, they had no choice.

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All this came at a bad time. The financial crisis which hit the far east in the mid-1990s took its toll on the Japanese space programme. The upshot was that in 1997, the Space Activities Commission agreed, following pressure from government, to cut space spending by 14%, through schedule slippages, the importation of foreign technology and the redesign of several programmes, like the H-II and the planned spaceplane. Other cancellations followed, like the J-1 rocket. To cap the tail of woe, another H-II failed, veering off course on 15th November 1999 and had to be destroyed  – Japan’s first flight failure since 1970. MTS was a project of the Ministry of Transport and was the first major satellite project conducted by a body other than ISAS or NASDA. Built by Loral, MTS stood for Multifunctional Transport Satellite. It was a box-shaped 4 m by 4 m, 1250 g satellite (2900 kg when fuelled) designed to combine weather observation and air traffic control, navigation and communications from 24 hr. orbit, with a 30 m span solar panel. MTS was to replace the last of the GMS series, Himawari 5. MTS had four infrared sensors (one with a 1 km resolution) and one in the visible channel to provide weather data on cloud height and distribution, wind conditions and temperatures. The ground breaking aspect of MTS was that it was intended to anticipate the continued rapid growth in air travel over the north Pacific region by ensuring a much higher level of safety through improved communications and navigation. The case was made that the American GPS was under performing in Japan, in mountains and areas of high skyscraper density, although this did not seem to be so much of a problem in other countries with similar features (Lele 2013). The MTS launch had already been postponed by a series of problems on the H-II rocket, such as a leak detector failure and electronic malfunctions. When it did eventually take off, the first stage cut out at 3 min 59 sec: the LE-7 engine shut down. Staging went ahead anyway at 5 min 30 sec, half a minute earlier than scheduled. The rocket began to veer off course, telemetry was lost at 7 min 35 sec and the destruct command was reluctantly sent in at 7 min 41 sec. Wreckage came down 380 km north west of the Ogasawara islands, where the Japanese dispatched a research vessel, the Karei, with a submersible, the Kaiho, which retrieved remains from 3000 m down. The following year saw the failure of the hitherto unblemished Mu-5 with Astro E.

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3.13 ADEOS/Midori: Atmosphere Observer Despite its problems, the H-II did succeed in its primary purpose of putting more advanced Earth observation satellites into orbit. ADEOS (Advanced Earth Orbiting Observation Satellite) was the third Japanese remote sensing satellite, following Momo and Fuyo. ADEOS was a 3560 kg gold-foil covered platform designed to note global changes in the Earth’s surface, atmosphere and oceans, in particular the ozone layer, the tropical rainforest, carbon dioxide at the poles and the greenhouse effect. ADEOS carried eight sensors, of which five were developed by Japan, two by NASA and one by the French space agency CNES. It was an expensive satellite, costing ¥112bn (€1bn), but sizeable, measuring 8 m tall and 4 m wide and was one of the heaviest launched by Japan. A small 50 kg amateur radio satellite developed by Nippon Electric and the Japan Amateur Radio League was launched piggyback on the mission by the H-II on 17th August 1996. ADEOS was a legacy of the Rio de Janeiro United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in whose Agenda 21 member states gave a commitment to develop Earth observation satellites. Renamed Midori (‘green observer’) once in orbit, it circled the Earth at nearly 800  km, encountered a routine range of teething troubles and was declared operational in November. Data began to flood in to the Earth Observation Centre in Hatoyama. The first pictures were superb and presented in a variety of formats (true colour and false colour). They identified concentrations of chlorophyll, tropical storms off Japan (typhoons Violet and Tom), the El Nino current stretching across the Pacific and the southern ozone hole. The Improved Limb Atmospheric Spectrometer noted the rise and fall of ozone concentrations and another meter recorded the distribution of greenhouse gases. In early 1997, Midori tracked the spread of spilt oil from a tanker off Japan, the pictures being put up on the internet. Important data back came from the AVNIR, or Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer. Although designed for soil, vegetation, pollution and energy studies, the 8 m resolution instrument sent back outstandingly clear pictures of urban areas such as Hiroshima. Early pictures from the eight-band ocean colour and temperature scanner provided images of plankton in the sea off the coast. ADEOS also carried TOMS, one of the environmentally most important instruments in Earth observation. TOMS, or Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, was invented by NASA in the 1970s and when flown on Nimbus 7  in 1978 it found the ozone hole over the Antarctic. A second TOMS was flown on a Russian Meteor 3 satellite, so ADEOS was its third

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assignment. Within a month, ADEOS had sent back new and worrying images of both the Antarctic and Arctic ozone holes. Contact with the spacecraft suddenly ended on 30th June 1997. Solar power from its wide 30 m wings was quickly lost, the batteries drained in four hours and it was declared abandoned the following month. Space débris was blamed at first, but a subsequent investigation found a more mundane, more human and more likely cause: a weld had broken at the base of the solar panel. NASA described this as ‘a real blow’. Although NASA had TOMS instruments for ozone on other spacecraft, the loss of sea surface wind data was irreplaceable. Midori was replaced by ADEOS 2 (Midori 2), which entered orbit of 803 – 820 km, 98.7°, 101 min on 14th December 2002. Following tradition, it acquired the same name, Midori 2. This was a similarly large satellite, 3.7 tonnes in weight, with a solar panel able to deliver 6200  W of power. Continuing the work began by its predecessor, it also had a specific role to measure water vapour, sea temperatures and global warning. Midori 2 carried an advanced microwave scanning radiometer with a wide swath (1600 km), an optical sensor working in 36 spectral bands able to look sideways as well as down and a limb atmospheric spectrometer to search for pollution (aerosols and ozone) in the atmosphere. As well as these Japanese instruments, overseas countries contributed equipment: NASA a sensor to measure sea winds and direction while the French space agency CNES an instrument called Polder to measure how the atmosphere reflected solar radiation. Sadly, Midori 2 suffered a catastrophic failure on 25th October 2003, also in less than a year. The satellite lost transmission following a malfunction in the single solar wing, possibly due to intense solar electromagnetic storms. This was subsequently blamed on the failure of a foreign component.

3.14 ETS-VII, Kiku 7 and TRMM The fifth H-II (27th November 1997) carried two quite different satellites: one engineering, one to study tropical rainfall. Engineering Test Satellite 7, ETS VII or Kiku 7, cost ¥33bn (€245  m), was designed to explore Earth orbiting rendezvous techniques that Japan would need to learn whenever it supplied the International Space Station. Seven manoeuvres were planned. ETS comprised two satellites – Hikoboshi (meaning Altair, the active satellite, weighing 2.5 tonnes) and the small Orihime (meaning Vega, the target, 400 kg), named after lovers in a Japanese fairy tale. Hikoboshi was box-shaped with twin solar arrays and 220  kg of fuel; Orihime had one array. The

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programme called for Hikoboshi to follow a number of rendezvous and docking profiles using ground control, radar and the global positioning system. After rendezvous, Hikoboshi was to test its remote manipulator arm for typical operations that would be carried out on the Japanese module of the International Space Station. The mission got off to a bad start, for it was hit by a gyroscope failure which prevented it from achieving proper orientation. Stability was lost for a worrying 6 hours. They lost one other’s positions and thrusters failed. Then attempts to connect ETS to the American tracking and data relay satellite system broke down. New software was uploaded, an example of adaptive technology, so mission control in Tsukuba went ahead to mastermind the first rendezvous and docking tests which began on 7th July 1998 – by coincidence the festival of Vega – when the two spacecraft separated to a distance of 2 m for 30 min. Using sensors and lasers to detect one another’s position, the smaller satellite inched toward the mother craft, which then gripped it with three pincers 550 km above Earth. On 6th August, Hikoboshi again separated from Orihime to a distance of 2 m and re-docked a few minutes later. Later that day, they separated to 525 m in preparation for more ambitious experiments. At this stage, attitude control on Hikoboshi failed and Hikoboshi retreated to a distance of 5  km while troubleshooting took place. Two attempts to re-dock failed on the 8th and 9th, the satellites coming to within 110 m of one another. The satellites lost one another’s position and seemed not to receive their instructions from Tsukuba. Again, on 13th August, the satellites came to within 145 m when attitude controls failed. After two further unsuccessful attempts when thrusters gave problems and attitude controls failed, Hikoboshi eventually pulled off a successful re-docking on 27th August, the re-docked combination then being in orbit of 542–544 km, 34.97°, 95.51 min. In doing so, Hikoboshi used up most of its manoeuvring fuel. All this was televised as the Earth rolled below. The docking was given extensive press coverage and hailed in the Japanese and western press as the first-ever automated docking, which it was not – the USSR had done this more than 20 years earlier (1967) – and as an important step to testing out procedures for sending Japanese spacecraft to future space stations (a justifiable claim). Although the manoeuvres were full of difficulties, such as thruster anomalies and attitude failures, the purpose of the mission had been to troubleshoot such problems. When they did occur, collision avoidance procedures were followed successfully and ground controllers were able to park the chaser while new procedures were worked out and fresh software uploaded. The thrusters and attitude control systems of NASDA’s

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planned relay satellites for the International Space Station were radically overhauled as a result. ETS VII engineers were showered with rewards from the Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Society of Control Engineers and the Robotics Society of Japan. This was far from the end of the Hikoboshi/Orihime experiment. The robot arm and hand on board, miniatures of those to be used on the International Space Station, were used to inject gas into a simulated tank, deploy and disassemble a truss structure, fasten bolts, connect electrical leads and capture floating objects. Communications were relayed through NASA’s system of tracking and data relay satellites, far out in 24 hr. orbit. In spring 1999, German Space Agency (DLR) engineers used virtual reality computers to make further tests of the arm and hand. In September 1999, Hikoboshi and Orihime again separated, though only to a 200  mm distance and Hikoboshi was instructed to use its hand to recapture its companion without ground assistance. Despite the very small quantity of fuel remaining, and despite some propulsion anomalies, a further set of release-and-recapture tests were carried out on 27th October 1999. The two years of ETS VII experiments were vital in laying the groundwork for Japan’s participation in the International Space Station. ETS VII fell out of orbit on 13th November 2015. Its companion was TRMM, released 14 min into the mission. So important was TRMM that it was launched outside the limited 90 day launch window imposed by local fishermen. Agreement to do so followed prolonged negotiations with the five fishermen’s unions involved. The Science & Technology Agency already paid ¥400 m (€3.57 m) a year to the fishermen for harbour works and compensation and extension of the window cost a further ¥300 m (€2.67 m). TRMM entered orbit of about 350 km, circular at 35°. The 3.6 tonne TRMM or Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission was a joint NASA/NASDA mission, Japan supplying the all-important rain radar. TRMM went back to an American initiative in the 1980s and was the first mainly American satellite launched by a Japanese rocket. NASA paid €283 m and NASDA €188 m for TRMM. The purpose of the mission was to provide the first comprehensive picture of tropical rainfall, which comprised three quarters of the world’s rain and atmospheric energy. TRMM had an unusual shape of boxes, trusses and rectangular containers. TRMM carried a microwave imager to peer through clouds, a rain radar, high resolution infrared scanner, lightning meter and a sensor to measure the Earth’s energy. The rain radar could make a three-dimensional swath of 150 km with a resolution of 4 km. This was a giant instrument, the shape of a bee’s honeycomb, twice the height of a person and three times the length. An early target was the El Nino

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current which had made such an impact on the western Americas. A long-­ term function of the mission was to estimate climate change. TRMM immediately proved its value in tracking typhoons and measuring their cloud height, information vital to an assessment of the danger they posed. The first images from TRMM were stunning – showing the band of tropical rain around the entire southern hemisphere, swirling cyclones (with heavy rainfall marked by false red colours) and three-dimensional cloud profiles showing where torrents of rain were falling down. Within 18 months, TRMM had improved global rainfall measurements by 25%. Scientists used TRMM to develop computer models of cloud and rainfall to make forecasting more accurate. Whereas most weather satellites saw a tropical storm as a white ball of cloud, TRMM’s instruments could identify the wall of the eye, see how it was developing and the direction in which it was travelling. The satellite was designed to operate 18 months and then be sent into a controlled de-orbit in 2003, but because it was still working perfectly and providing such useful data, NASA controllers re-boosted the orbit to buy extra time. By July 2004, TRMM’s altitude had fallen back again and NASA announced that it was time to carry out a controlled de-orbit manoeuvre. There was a howl of protests from meteorologists, who argued that they should keep the satellite aloft and take their chances on an uncontrolled reentry. Why kill off a perfectly good satellite when, for a small risk, you could get another two years of quality data? TRMM remained in orbit sufficiently longer for the Japanese space agency to publish an internet-based quasi-real time global precipitation map. It was updated hourly and could be directly accessed by any internet user in Asia or elsewhere to locate typhoons or any other form of heavy rain.

3.15 Final H-II: Winged Bird, COMETS/Kakehashi The last successful H-II was COMETS – or COMmunications and broadcasting Engineering Test Satellite  – renamed Kakehashi (‘bridge’) when it reached orbit on 21st February 1998. Constructed by NEC, COMETS was intended to use transponders to test communications with mobile phone and other satellites, demonstrate tracking and data relay systems, test high-­ definition television and four xenon propulsion motors, each of 25 mN thrust. Like a winged bird, it had enormous solar panels 30 m long. The cost was ¥45.2bn (€403 m) and it was the most advanced communications technology satellite ever built in Japan.

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Table 3.4  H-II launches 3 Feb 1994 28 Aug 1994 18 Mar 1995 17 Aug 1996 27 Nov 1997 21 Feb 1998 15 Nov 1999

OREX/Ryusei EP/Myojo ETS VI/Kiku 6 SFU GMS 5/Himawari 5 ADEOS/Midori 1 Fuji 3 ETS VII/Kiku 7 TRMM COMETS/Kakehashi MTS (fail)

All from Tanegashima

The mission got off to a bad start when the H-II second stage shut down early, after only 44 sec into a 192 sec burn, making it impossible for the satellite to reach its intended destination of geosynchronous orbit. COMETS was left in a 247 – 1883 km orbit instead of the 36,000 km planned. NASDA’s investigation panel later found that a tiny hole had burned through the LE-5A’s motor nozzle casing, igniting wires which caused the engine to shut down. Fortunately, of the 3900 kg weight of COMETS, 1900 kg comprised station-keeping fuel. In March, a 90 sec burn lifted the perigee from 250 km to 390 km, the first in a series of seven manoeuvres to raise the orbit to 500 – 17,700 km and thus enable about 60% of the original mission to be carried out. COMETS did manage to relay signals for the ETS VII automatic docking operations, but the mission as a whole could not be saved and was abandoned in mid-1999, two years ahead of schedule. Its orbit will last at least a thousand years (Table 3.4). The last H-II never flew and was eventually put on display on its side outside JAXA headquarters, not unlike the leftover Saturn Vs from America’s Apollo programme.

3.16 Augmented: H-IIA The H-II, although a great technical achievement, was much more expensive than ever anticipated. When the H-II first flew, the Japanese were confident that satellite companies would pay the extra money involved for its reliability. In the end, the reliability was not achieved either. The problem on the seventh H-II was a big blow. Japan entered the H-II in a number of international commercial competitions for satellite launches in the early to mid-1990s, only to be repeatedly beaten by Europe’s Ariane and China’s Long March. The financial pressure became even more acute when Russia’s Proton entered the

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world launcher market, with early success. The Japanese had to accept that with the H-II, their attempt to compete head-to-head with the other countries had not come off. NASDA had offered the H-II for ¥8.5bn (€54 m), less for bulk orders, but got not a single one.

H-IIA seaside view. JAXA

It was decided to phase out the H-II and replace it with a more reliable, modernized, simpler, economical version, the H-IIA, ‘A’ standing for ‘augmented’. Although the H-IIA did not have an exciting name, it was a winner, for it offered the same performance but at half the price and many times the reliability, for 39 of its first 40 launches were successful. Each H-II launch had cost around €188 m (¥29bn), twice that of an equivalent launch by an Atlas or Ariane and it was NASDA’s objective to bring the cost of the H-IIA down to between €94  m and €141  m (¥10.5bn to ¥15.7bn), though a more ambitious figure of €80 m (¥8.9bn) was later set. Japan had the ambition that the H-IIA gain up to 17% of the world launcher market by 2003. Confident that the H-IIA would succeed, a first production run of 23 rockets was ordered. In November 1996, Rocket Systems Corporation won contracts from Hughes and Loral to launch ten satellites on the H-IIA from 2000 to 2005. To achieve these competitive economies, NASDA decided, reluctantly, to use imported technologies again, with American solid rocket boosters by Thiokol, the company which built the boosters for the space shuttle and able to offer 10% more power. They were shorter and fatter than those of the H-II, comprising a single segment rather than four, all of which had previously to be stacked separately, an expensive and time-consuming process. The redesign involved a new engine, the LE-7A, a very much simplified version of the H-II’s troublesome LE-7, with new cryogenic tanks, redesigned plumbing, pre-burner chamber and turbopump systems, able to offer 13% more power. Other economies were made: the weight of the second-stage tank was reduced, copper tubing replaced stainless steel tubing, the amount of engine welding

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was reduced and production time for the engines was halved. There were lighter electronics, a reduced number of engine parts and fewer welds, potentially a point of weakness. Tank domes were also imported, from the then MAN company in Germany. There was a customized nose fairing for different payloads to improve performance. The interstage was 200 kg, lighter, being made of carbon composites and with 140 parts, rather than 1200 on the H-II. Overall, the H-IIA had 20% fewer parts than the H-II, but that was still 200,00 parts. Five versions of the H-IIA were originally announced, all with different combinations of solid fuel rockets on the side, to achieve maximum flexibility for the rush of expected customers. The development programme for the new rocket was set to cost ¥77bn (€696 m). The first new solid motors for the H-IIA were successfully tested in 1998. Development of the new LE-7A first stage engine proved to be problematical, principally the wiring systems and nozzle vibration. The third test failed due to a hairline crack while another crack caused the fifth test to be called off 3 sec into a 350 sec firing. There was a further premature shutdown in a June 1999 test. Eventually, long-duration engine tests were successfully completed in September 1999, putting the programme back on course.

LE-7A. Davide Sivolella

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Tests of the new second stage engine were more encouraging. For the first time, Japan introduced, but on the second, not first stage, expander bleed technology, whereby surplus fuel is not used in the turbopumps but bled off overboard, which is simpler (20% fewer parts) but wasteful and less efficient. The LE-5B was designed to achieve 14,000 kg of thrust compared to 12,500 for the LE-5, but to be lighter at the same time. Thirteen successful firings were carried out by Mitsubishi at its Akita, northern Japan test stand in 1996, including continuous firings of more than 300 sec. It was decided to give the LE-5B a live test on the H-II on the MTS satellite launch in late 1999, leading to the launch being renamed ‘the half H-IIA’, though it had an unhappy ending. When the H-IIA finally rolled out, it was an impressive sight, standing 53 m tall, weighing 285 tonnes: a worthy rival for the Ariane, Proton and Delta. Japan returned to space with the H-IIA on 29th August 2001. The brown-and-silver rocket rose on the twin pillars of fire of the solid rocket boosters, soared over the Pacific and placed in orbit a laser test payload. The second flight, also a test flight, took place on 4th February 2002, when the H-IIA put three test payloads into orbit, including Tsubasa, meaning ‘wings’. One payload, an atmospheric reentry test (Demonstrator of Atmospheric Reentry System with Hyper Velocity (DASH), failed too deploy, but this was not a launcher problem. The technical success was not matched by the commercial. The H-IIA’s first intended European satellite was ARTEMIS, but this moved to the Ariane. Nevertheless, Japan went ahead with its own operational missions. The first took place on 10th September 2002, going flawlessly and placing in orbit the USERS free-flier and the DRTS relay satellite. The USERS (Unmanned Space Experiment Recovery System) free-flier was a ¥31.698bn (€283 m) project to orbit a 800 kg box-and-wings service module carrying technological experiments and recover a 900 kg reentry module. The purpose was to grow crystals for six months in a Superconductor Gradient Heating Furnace. USERS entered orbit of 440–455 km, 30.4°. After a 255 day mission, the results from the furnace were transferred to the 1.6 m diameter cone-shaped reentry module. This then propelled itself away and on 25th May 2003 fired a solid-fuel reentry rocket. A storm delayed recovery and it was not picked up by the recovery ship until 30th May. This was a further advance, the first time  – excepting Express – that Japan had recovered a satellite from orbit. The main module continued in orbit on a three-year mission. The second operational mission was 14th December 2002, when the H-IIA orbited three payloads, ADEOS 2, the Whale Ecology Observation Satellite (WEOS) and Fedsat, for Australia. This was the first Australian satellite since 1967, when an American Redstone rocket had put a small Australian satellite

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into orbit from Woomera. As for WEOS (Kant-kun), this was a low-cost, ¥42 m (€377,000) project devised by Dr. Takeshi Ori of the NEC Corporation and Dr. Tomonao Hayashi of the Chiba Institute in 1995, to use satellites to follow the migration routes of the blue whale, the largest and most endangered type of whale. The whale would be harpooned harmlessly. Attached to the harpoon would be a 10 kg float which would have a satellite transmitter sending reports beamed up on 400 MHz to 47 kg WEOS. Electric power was to come from a dynamo to recharge the lithium ion battery in the float from the whale’s swimming motion. The satellite was to pick up data from a number of blue whales, telling of their movement, the water temperature, the periods of time spent by the whale on and under water, sending the data down in a daily communication pass to Chiba Institute of Technolog. Although the satellite worked perfectly for many years and won a design contest, no suitable whale was found to participate! (Hyashi et al. 2004). Consideration was then given to using it to track mountain bears on Honshu.

3.17 H-IIA Loss: Back to the Drawing Board USERS and ADEOS 2 gave confidence that the changes since the H-II had been successful. In a major setback, the H-IIA was lost on its sixth mission, on 29th November 2003. The H-IIA was attempting to put into orbit a pair of optical and radar observation satellites, the fifth mission having put into orbit the first pair (Chap. 6: Change in direction). The problem began at 62 sec, when one of the two large solid rocket boosters generated excess temperature and then lost thrust. This of itself was not fatal, but the flames burnt through the electric cabling that sent the command to separate the solid rocket from the main booster. At 105 sec, the other large solid fuel rocket separated, on schedule, but the faulty booster was still attached, now providing 10,000 kg worth of asymmetrical thrust. Downward-facing cameras had been fitted on the upper stage, so all this could be clearly seen. The rocket veered off course, but it would never have had sufficient thrust to reach orbit. At 11 min, the destruct command was sent, with the rogue rocket then at an altitude of 422 km. It turned out that the nozzle of the solid rocket booster had burned through. Wreckage from the H-IIA came down in the Philippines and a robot was sent down to retrieve the payloads before someone else did. This was a big disappointment, one that deeply affected the space agency. With the H-IIA, the Japanese had thought that they had put behind them the problems of design and quality control that had plagued the H-II, but this was not the case. The loss of the two surveillance satellites was a setback, for

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the existing two required companions to form an effective constellation. As was the habit with the Japanese, the setback did not come on its own, coinciding with the loss of the Mars probe Nozomi (Chap. 4). The failure caused a resurgence of the worry that Japan was underperforming. Only the previous month, China had launched its first astronaut, Yang Liwei. On 17th March, 50 Parliamentarians formed an all-party committee focussed on reviving Japan’s space programme. Some looked for an explanation in the fallen space budget, down from ¥300bn in 2002 (€1.9bn) to ¥250bn (€1.6bn) in 2003. The H-IIA was grounded for well over a year. Over the following 14 months, 80 changes were made. The Japanese introduced a two-stage re-qualification campaign: a test launch (flight 7), followed by an intentionally demanding two launches 25 days apart (flights 8 and 9), with flight 9 carrying an exceptionally heavy payload. After a gap of over a year, the H-IIA returned to flight with MTS-1R in February 2005, renamed Himawari 6 once in orbit. Himawari 6 was stationed at 140°E and operated until it retired in December 2015 and drifted off station. The two-launches-in-25-days campaign put a considerable level of stress on Tanegashima, for the intention was to improve on the 3 months launch campaign of the H-II.  Flight 8 was launched on 24th January 2006, a calm, cloudy day, with Earth resources satellites, ALOS (Daichi) separating 16 min 6 sec later. Flight 9 was MTS 2. The payload arrived in a huge wide-load convoy during the night and was stacked on top of the H-IIA in the hangar, being blessed for good luck by a shinto priest. The heaviness of the payload meant that four strap-ons must be used. All the workers and managers gathered for speeches to focus their attention on the forthcoming task. A large press assembled all along the seashore, with bright red hard hats, in case the worst were to happen. They need not have worried. At T-270 sec, the count went automatic and at T-30 sec onto internal power. Like its predecessor, flight 9 disappeared into cloud, but cameras on the rocket itself recorded the ascent, the blue Earth receding in the distance and the strap-ons tumbling away. The fairings came off at 3  min 53  sec and second stage ignition at 7  min. At 28 min, MTS 2 was safely in orbit and there were cheers in the control room, though the overwhelming sensation was one of relief. MTS 2 was the 98th Japanese satellite and the 6381st in the world. The re-qualification of the H-IIA marked a major milestone in the Japanese launcher programme. Commercially, though, the much touted cost savings had no immediate outcome. There were eventually some orders, first with small satellites: KOMPSAT 3 (Rep. Korea, 2012) and Khalifa Sat (United Arab Emirates, 2018), with

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Melco then building Turksat 4A and 4B for Turkey, both launched by the Russian Proton (2012, 2015) – but these were marginal markets. This was not the case for Telstar 12 V (‘V’ for ‘Vantage’), launched from Tanegashima on 24th November 2015 to 12°W, a perfect location to transmit to the Americas, Africa, Europe and the middle east, where its Ku band terminals would bring broadband through broad and focussed beams. The upper stage was adapted to make two burns, then a long coast and a final third burn to reach its final orbit. The stage then vented, a phenomenon seen over the United States. The next big success was on 22nd December 2021 when the H-IIA launched the INMARSAT 6-1 communications satellite, its 45th flight. It was the first in the INMARSAT 6 series, built by Airbus using the Eurostar 3000 all-electric bus, with a 9 m L-band antenna for the Internet Of Things and nine multi-beam Ka-band antennæ for mobile communications over the Indian Ocean. It was one of the largest and most sophisticated communications satellites launched, 5470 kg and had a 47 m wingspan providing 21 kW of solar power. After the launch, only five H-IIAs remained. Himawari 8 (2014) was an unusual story. Its first assignment was to follow the Tonga volcano, very much the purpose for which it was made. However, in a constellation far away, a star well known to astronomers, Betelgeuse, appeared to have dimmed by a third over 2019-2020. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star, the tenth brightest in the sky in the unmistakeable constellation of Orion. It is the closest star of its kind, 900 times larger than the Sun and 20 times its mass (if it were our Sun, it would extend to the asteroid belt). Dimming can be a precursor to its explosion as a supernova sometime in the next 100,000 years. Such dimming is difficult to observe from Earth because our atmosphere filters out infrared light. Himawari 8, imaging the Earth every 10 min from its perch at 36,000 km in infrared light, was found out by a University of Tokyo PhD student Daisuke Taniguchi to have Betelgeuse in its field of view. He called up images every 1.7 days from that moment on and back images to 2017, building up four years of data to June 2021. Apparently no one had ever used a humble meteorological satellite for such a purpose before, though such use seems obvious now. He and his colleagues wrote a learned paper published in Nature Astronomy Letters with the arresting title of The great dimming of Betelgeuse (Taniguchi et al. 2022; Carter 2022). They wrote of how in January 2019 a shockwave emerged from the bottom of the photosphere, propagating to the outer envelope, triggering the dimming. Betelgeuse, it seems, spewed out a cloud of gas that fell back, condensed into dust and cooled the star by 140°, causing it to dim. Such an event, they wrote, provided astronomers worldwide with an opportunity to examine the mechanism responsible for the loss

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of mass of red supergiants. Taniguchi is now mining other Himawari data for infrared changes observable in other stars.

3.18 ETS VIII, Kiku 8: A Giant, Hovering Insect The next ETS, VIII, or Kiku 8 was the eighth in the series of Engineering Test Satellites (ETS), huge at 6.5 tonnes, designed to test the development of high-­ speed, compact disk quality satellite-based mobile telephone communications from 24  hr. orbit and ultimately lead to the elimination of ground masts. Built by Toshiba and Mitsubishi, the ¥32bn (€292 m) ETS VIII was intended to ensure that Japan remain at the cutting-edge of new telecommunications technologies. ETS VIII had large deployable reflectors, 19 m by 17 m, twice the size of the Muses B experiment, each the size of a tennis court. They made the satellite look like a giant hovering insect, taking 60 min to deploy, hard to simulate on the ground. Deploying them was of itself a difficult and delicate undertaking, involving the development of carbon fibre reinforced struts and computer-controlled small electric motors to push the reflectors into shape, all tested out in zero-gravity flights in Airbus aircraft. Because of these difficulties, two tests were run in advance called LDREX (Large Deployable Reflector), the second succeeding on the European Ariane 5 launch of 13th October 2006. ETS VIII was eventually launched on 18th December 2006, using the most powerful version of the H-IIA with four solid rocket boosters. The launch, the eleventh for the H-IIA, had been delayed for two days due to coastal fog but in the end went off perfectly. Separation was confirmed at 27 min 35 and Santiago tracking station picked up signals at 55 min, indicating solar wing deployment. All went well for a year, but in January 2008 two of its four ion thrusters failed. The mission was able to continue functioning on two other ion engines and its chemical engines.

3.19 Beams Across Space: Kirari, Reimei and Kizuna Successor to COMETS was the much smaller, 550 kg OICETS, or Optical Inter Orbit Communications Engineering Test Satellite. Originally intended for a Japanese launch, after many delays, it was eventually launched by a Russian Dnepr rocket on 23rd August 2005 into a 608–611  km, 97.8°, 96.6  min and acquired the name Kirari. Accompanying OICETS was

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INDEX, the Innovative Technology Demonstration Experimental Satellite, which was named Reimei. Kirari was 570 kg, box-shaped, 0.89 m by 1.1 m by 1.5 m with two solar panels spanning 9.36  m, on top its only instrument, the Laser Utilizing Communications Equipment (LUCE). It was shaped like a camera with a zoom lens intended to transmit large volumes of data up to 45,000  km through open space in narrow beams and S-band links with an accuracy of 0.0003°. It was designed to communicate with the €1bn European Space Agency satellite ARTEMIS (Advanced Relay and TEchnology MIssion Satellite). As for ARTEMIS, it had been launched on the Ariane 5 rocket earlier, on 12th July 2001. In a disappointment, the Ariane’s third stage shut down early due to combustion instabilities, leaving ARTEMIS in an orbit of 592–17,528  km, far below the 36,000  km circular orbit intended (also stranded was a commercial Japanese communications satellite, BSAT 2b). Against the odds and using up almost all the fuel for its ion thrusters, European space controllers managed to deliver ARTEMIS to its intended orbit in January 2003, a year and a half later. The first successful test run of the laser communications system took place on 9th December between ARTEMIS and Kirari. Kirari’s companion INDEX (Reimei) was a 60 kg aurora satellite made by young ISAS engineers which sent back a substantial body of data over a long period. Ibuki, ‘breath’, was the name favoured by the team members, but Reimei, ‘dawn’, by project manager Hirobumi Saito. His motives were largely personal: the kanji character Rei reminded him of his first girlfriend, who had that name. In 2021, ISAS reported that INDEX had enabled astronomers to understand the formation of pulsating aurora. These were blue and green arcs in the sky formed by electron precipitation of plasma waves at 9.7 keV at low altitudes near the geomagnetic equator. They took the form of microbursts of only a second or less but were dangerous enough to cause satellites to malfunction and deplete ozone, thus attracting the moniker of ‘killer electrons’ . The next technology demonstration satellite was WINDS (Wideband Inter Networking Demonstration Satellite) or Kizuna, launched by H-IIA into spring skies on 23rd February 2008. As it came over the tracking station in Santiago, Chile, a picture was beamed back to show that the solar panels had deployed properly. Apogee burn was on 24th February and geostationary orbit was achieved on 1st March. Kizuna drifted until 31st March when its 20 N thruster brought it to its geosynchronous orbit location at 143°E. Kizuna was designed by JAXA with the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and built by NEC Toshiba to promote

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space-based anyone-anytime-anywhere high-speed, wide bandwidth, large-­ volume internet communications. It was considered especially important for communications with the islands, disaster management and public services such as education and medicine. It had one Ka-band dish focussed on the Japanese islands, another on south east Asia and a flat phased array on Asia Pacific. It was intended to achieve transmission speeds of 155  MB/sec to home users with 45  cm dishes and 1.2  GB/sec to 5  m dishes. Kizuna was 2700 kg, 2 m by 3 m by 8 m with a span of 21.5 m able to generate 5200 W.

3.20 ALOS/Daichi: Day and Night, Cloud-Free JERS (Fuyo) was replaced 24th January 2006 by ALOS, or Advanced Land Observation Satellite, renamed Daichi when it reached orbit, the Japanese word for ‘mother Earth’. Afterwards, the second stage of the launcher exploded over Europe, leaving 21 débris objects by September 2006. ALOS was to combine radar and optical (ALOS 1); radar (ALOS 2, 4) and optical (ALOS 3) satellites. This ¥47bn (€350 m) project was the largest Earth resources project devised in Japan, the satellite weighing 4200 kg, one of its heaviest, requiring 7 kW of electrical power, for which a single, 22 m long panel was used. It was intended to observe the Earth, survey natural resources and assist disaster management, revisiting each site in the Japanese islands every two days. ALOS could create maps of 1:25,000 scale. Aerial mapping can only do 7  km2 at a time, but space-based mapping can do 70  km by 35  km at a time and much faster. Maps always require updating, for example due to new buildings or new roads. Nor can aircraft fly into the aftermath of an Earthquake during bad weather and certainly cannot fly into volcanic dust, but ALOS could get around such problems. ALOS 1 carried a stereo mapping remote sensing instrument using a 2.5 m resolution mapping camera (PRISM); a 240 kg visible and infrared radiometer with 10 m resolution (AVENIR); and a 475 kg phased array synthetic aperture radar (PALSAR), for day and night, cloud-­ free observations. From its 697 km high sun-synchronous orbit, the data relay system was designed to send back highly compressed information at 1.36 GB/ sec. It was built by Mitsubishi, NEC and Toshiba. At first, Daichi’s optical images were too blurry for the government’s Geographical Survey Institute, but the problem was fixed. The next batch was of improved quality and showed the Japanese islands, ice in the Sea of Okhotsk and fresh volcanic ash on the slopes of an Indonesian volcano. A new profile was made of Japan’s own Mount Fuji. In July 2007 Daichi imaged the

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subsidence and cave-in on the ocean floor resulting from an offshore Earthquake 60 km off Nigata, west Honshu. From 2008, Daichi was used to monitor ten United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) world heritage sites, such as Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Sichuan giant panda sanctuaries in China, an ancient Mayan city in Mexico and Machu Picchu in Peru. Its radar data were made publicly available free of charge. ALOS was one of the first to take images of the devastation of the 7.9 May 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, showing a town engulfed by a subsequent landslide, its help much appreciated by the Chinese authorities. Daichi was one of the first satellites to photograph the impact of the Great East Japan 9.0 Earthquake and subsequent flooding, taking 400 photographs in the period immediately afterward. Most were of the damaged coastal areas, but they were also important in identifying landslides inland. One learning point was the importance of being able to get satellite data out not just to central government and its agencies, but to local authorities at the coal face of the disaster. Daichi failed 22nd April 2011, only a month after the Earthquake, due to a degradation of its solar panels causing a power failure. The mission was formally abandoned on 22nd May. By this stage, it had exceeded its five-year design life. ALOS had taken 6.4 m images, enabling the re-mapping of Japan and some African countries. It had photographed over a hundred disasters. It had monitored forest logging and enabled the compilation of a list of wetlands for conservation under the Ramsar convention to protect wildfowl habitats. Its sudden loss highlighted the value of such satellites in Earthquake monitoring. This left Japan without its own Earth observational system for three years until ALOS 2 (Daichi 2) on 24th May 2014, a 2120 kg radar satellite in a Sun Synchronous 630 km high orbit with daily midnight and midday passes. Daichi 2 was a box shape 10 m by 3.7 m, span 16.5 m, with two wide solar panels, with, underneath, its panel-shaped 9.9  m long 25  cm wavelength, 1.2GHz frequency PALSAR 2 L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar, the main instrument. Its resolution was 1  m (spotlight mode) to 100  m (scan mode), with swath ranging from 25 km (spotlight) to 350 km (scan). The shorter revisit time was achieved by enabling the SAR to look left or right as well as down. The field of view widened from 870 km to 2320 km. Downlink was 800 MB/sec directly or 278 MB/sec through the Kodama satellite relay. Daichi 2 used a lithium ion battery, lighter and more efficient than the earlier nickel cadmium which lost efficiency on every discharge cycle.

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ALOS 2 Daichi 2. JAXA

Japan believed that PALSAR made it a world leader, especially its application to land and forest. Not only could it work around the clock, but penetrate cloud and leaves. It could identify land surface deformation and movement, a feature of Earthquake zones. Daichi images showed the shrinking of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and its subsequent salinization; and by contrast, the expansion of the Batagaika crater in eastern Siberia as a result of deforestation and thawing permafrost due to global warming. ALOS 2 took photographs of the torrential rain event in Kyushu in July 2020, dramatically showing how rivers had flooded surrounding terrain. Its pattern of midnight passes were ideal for organizing disaster response teams for early the following morning. Flooding in Nagano following hurricane Hagibis was clearly visible. ALOS 2 was a major contributor to a 10-year programme to use satellites to monitor recovery from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, leading to datasets of landscapes ‘before Earthquake’, ‘five years after’ and ‘ten years after’ showing seasonal changes and evolving patterns of residential reconstruction, rice farming, grasses, forest (subdivided into types) and even solar panels on roofs. Land abandoned or damaged because of the Fukushima nuclear accident was readily apparent. For the future, landslides and mudslides were potential early warning signs or predictors of forthcoming Earthquake ground collapse, so their speedy detection by satellites could save lives.

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ALOS 2 Daichi 2 forest loss (red). JAXA

Perhaps the most striking results came in the area of forestry. Its radar could detect illegal logging by night or during the rainy season (Sugita and Ho 2022; Ishikawa 2023) The earlier Daichi revisit period for forests was 46 days, too long to catch illegal loggers in the act, whereas for Daichi 2 it was 14 days. Red dots on subsequently published maps clearly showed forest loss. ALOS 2 was the key instrument in the JAXA Forest Early Warning System in the Tropics, called JJ-FAST which can cover all the world’s forests with 50 m resolution every six weeks and offers free worldwide access by computer or mobile phone. By 2021, it had detected 1.5 m instances of illegal logging and it was no surprise than a third were in Brazil. Images of the Brazilian rainforest in 2017 could be compared to ALOS 1 in 2007, showing clearly a depressing pattern of decadal fishbone-type deforestation. In a better news story, in 2021 Daichi 2 provided the first detailed update of the stock of the Russian forests since the Soviet period (1988), moreover one which improved on the Russian Federation’s own forest register. Despite forest fires and other disturbances, Russia had 39% more forest than reported in the state register and sequestered 47% more carbon than previously reported, one of the few ‘good news’ reports in the global environment that year (Voiland 2011; Shepaschenko et al. 2021). ALOS 2 entered its late operational phase in the mid-2020s.

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3.21 Climate Crisis: GOSAT/Ibuki It is no surprise that new types of satellites launched by the H-IIA would pay ever more attention to the growing global climate crisis. Midori 2 was replaced by GOSAT (Greenhouse gas Observing SATellite), a 1.65 tonne satellite designed to measure carbon gases, aerosols and methane in the atmosphere. Hitherto, greenhouse gases were measured at only 280 ground locations, but GOSAT was designed to take measurements at up to 56,000 points uniformly across its 98° polar orbit every three days. Ibuki was in effect the first in a new series that led on to the Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM) which became GCOM-C (Climate, Shikisai) and GCOM-W (Water, Shizuku). The idea was that GCOM-C would focus on the atmosphere (carbon cycle, radiation budget, clouds, aerosols, ocean colour, snow, ice, plankton) while GCOM-W focussed on water (rain, snow, sea surface wind speed, soil moisture). In the early days of space exploration, names had been chosen by mission managers. Now, in a spirit of electronic democracy, people were invited to suggest names through an internet site and Ibuki (‘breath’) was selected. GOSAT, Ibuki, 1750  kg, was launched 23rd January 2009 into a 669–672 km, 98° orbit. It measured 2.4 m by 2.6 m by 3.7 m, with a span of 13.7  m. Built by Melco, it carried a spectrometer and cloud and aerosol imager which could detect carbon dioxide and methane traces at 4 ppm (parts per million) and 34 ppb (parts per billion) respectively. Data were released on a dedicated website. Ibuki highlighted plants: as they photosynthesize, plants emit a reddish glow which is difficult to detect – but not beyond the capacity of GOSAT’s spectrometer. This made it possible to publish a global map, showing the reddish glow in both hemispheres, the contrast of north and south in June and December being very evident. In effect, it was the first map of the health of plants on Earth. In 2012, JAXA released the first full round of Ibuki data (June 2009 – May 2010), with colour-coded maps to show the areas of net CO2 emission and absorption in g/m2/day. Ibuki maps were soon able to show the different worldwide patterns of greenhouse gases across the seasons. In 2021, Ibuki data were matched against monitors on passenger aircraft able to detect greenhouse gases in situ, starting with the the Haneda and Fukuoka route, thereby improving calibration and detail.

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GOSAT 2 Ibuki 2 electrical test. JAXA

Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite GOSAT 2, named Ibuki 2, was intended to compile an ever-more-accurate, calibrated set of global data on carbon dioxide (0.5 ppm) and methane (5 ppb) gases. Built by Melco, it was launched on the H-IIA on 29th October 2018 and entered orbit 16 min later. Ibuki 2 weighed 2000 kg and measured 5.3 m by 2 m by 2.8 m, with a span of 16.5 m and orbited at 585–599 km, revisiting its targets every six days. As well as taking broad 1000 km swaths, it could zoom in on concentrations of pollutants, such as industrial areas and locations of high population densities. GOSAT 2 was expected to improve detection of carbon dioxide from human and natural sources. It generated global maps of levels of CO2 concentration.

3.22 GCOM-W (Water)/Shizuku Shizuku (‘dewdrop’ or ‘water drop’) was the name for the Global Change Observation Satellite, 1991 kg. It was launched by H-IIA on 17th May 2012 into an orbit of 670–674 km, 98.2°. The name was the most popular of the 20,000 voted. Shizuku was a medium-size satellite, two tonnes weight, 3.4 m high, 5.1 m side, 17.5 m with its two solar panels generating 4050 W. GCOM-W Shizuku carried two instruments:

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–– Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR), to observe in six microwave bands, 7 to 89 GHz, similar to the one on the American Aqua satellite, with a swath of 1250 km, to get a total picture of water, cloud liquid water, sea surface temperature, wind speed, sea ice, snow depth and soil moisture content over a two-day revisit time; –– Second Generation Global Imager, for clouds, aerosols, ocean colour, vegetation, snow and ice to inform our understanding of the radiation budget and carbon cycle.

GCOM-W Shizuku. JAXA

Shizuku data were provided in real time to the Japan Meteorological Agency, giving much more accurate forecasts, for example of the likely level of rainfall. Global maps of all these elements were quickly compiled. A comparison with the 1980s showed the alarming decline of the Arctic ice sheet. Sea ice cover in 2012 was the smallest ever observed, 3.49  m  km2, down from 4.25 m km2 in 2007. Glaciers in Greenland, Norway and Canada that had not melted before were now doing so. New gaps opened up in the ice. The was surface melting from all the Greenland ice sheet, not just the peripheries. In October 2012, Japan sent a marine research ship, the Mirai, to make on-the-­ spot investigations following the Shizuku data (Kawamoto 2013). The data have led to coloured maps of average sea temperatures worldwide.

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3.23 GCOM-C (Climate) Shikisei with Tsubame On 23rd December 2017, Japan launched the Global Change Climate Observation Mission  – Core (GCOM-C) (Shikisei) with the Super Low Altitude Test Satellite (SLATS) (Tsubame, meaning ‘swallow’ bird) on the H-IIA (this Tsubame is not to be confused with the November 2014 launch on a Russian Dnepr). This profile involved putting Shikisai into a higher orbit first and then lowering it to deploy SLATS. GCOM-C weighed two tonnes, had two solar panels able to generate 4000  W and had three instruments: Second Generation Global Imager; Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer; and Infrared Scanner. It had a revisit time of 2–3 days and resolution from 250 m to 1 km. Its optical sensor was especially valuable in using invisible wavelength light to detect aerosols and measurement of vegetation. Another purpose of Shikisei was first to collect particles of microscopic dust from the upper atmosphere at 790 km.

GCOM-C Shikisai image of Hokkaido. JAXA

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GCOM-C Shikisai was one of a number of satellites that observed the 2019 fires in the Amazon rainforest, JAXA subsequently publishing some shocking maps of the devastation, the areas marked in red against the remaining green. Shikisai generated maps of ground temperatures, plant activity and the level of atmospheric particles. It compiled a soil water content map of north America. Shikisai was especially important for tracking the Kuroshio current, sometimes called the ‘gulf stream of the Pacific’, for it began a strange meander out to sea south of the Kii peninsular, Honshu, possibly connected to rainfall change on the islands. Shikisai was able to measure heat wave temperatures, up to 50 °C in Kanto in June 2022, red tide, drifting algae and pumice rafts. Tsubame measured 1.5 by 5.2 by 0.9  m, had a weight of 400  kg and required 1100 W power. JAXA described Tsubame as the first Earth observation satellite to fly below 300 km, also called a ‘super-low’ orbit. The spacecraft was designed to be compact and lightweight as possible to minimize air resistance, with unusually small sensors. In reality, it was not the first satellite to experiment with this profile, which was established by the American Explorer 51 dipping down to 115 km as far back as 1973. A super-low orbit has the advantage of higher resolution for observations and lower power needed for data transmission, but the disadvantages of high atmospheric drag, a thousand times greater than at the standard observing height of 600 to 700 km. Normally, satellites maintain altitude through conventional rocket engines, but the fuel required to keep a super-low satellite in orbit would weight it down even more. To maintain the orbit, a xenon ion engine was developed. A particular purpose of Tsubame was to test the way in which in super-low orbits atomic oxygen damages satellite surfaces, so a layering resistant to atomic oxygen was applied. Tsubame lowered its orbit in January to 456–608 km before further planned reductions to 268 km circular. It then operated at 133–147 km before reentry on 19th October 2019.

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SLATS Tsubame. JAXA

One of the mission objectives was to test small optical sensors at low altitudes. The test object was, appropriately enough, changing letters laid out over a month on the pitch of the Jingdu stadium used by the Tokyo Swallows baseball team, filmed from 270 km, then 180 km.

3.24 Global Precipitation Measurement Core (GPM-C) The GPM-C mission was a joint venture between NASA and JAXA as a successor to TRMM, with an emphasis on getting data on rain and snowfall into the hands of users within the shortest possible period. The spacecraft was built at NASA’s Goddard space centre, the largest ever built in-house, weighing 3855 kg (including 550 kg fuel), 6.5 m tall and with solar panels 13 m wide. The cost of GPM-C was $226 m (¥32bn)) contributed by Japan and $933 m (¥134bn) by the United States. It had two instruments: a Dual frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) (Japan) made by NEC Toshiba taking 5 km swaths of the water below; and GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) (US), with 13 channels. GPM-C had a focus on the role of water in our climate, responding to concerns about growing extremes of drought and flood, which made it all the more important to better measure and understand rainfall patterns, volumes, distributions and systems in play. GPM had the capacity to measure light rain for the first time, making possible much improved 3D maps of the whole rainfall process. GPM-C was expected to follow storms, especially important

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granted the typhoons that swept into Japan from the Pacific. Moreover, data would be compared with other satellite records as far back as possible to look for evidence of climate change.

GPM in Goddard. NASA

GPM-C left Goddard for Japan in late 2013, followed by 90 NASA personnel to assist in the pre-launch testing phase there, requiring the poweredup testing of 30 main systems and subsystems. Before leaving, there was a family-­and-­friends day where people were invited to view and photograph it. The main question asked was How are you going to get that into its crate? The answer was ‘very carefully’, using cranes to tilt it gradually into place. There was also a media day, attracting 60 traditional and social media, a record, indicating the significance of the mission (Cork 2013). GPM-C was launched on 27th February 2014. It was soon able to create a 3D picture of rain and snow particles, their size, chape and intensity; make profiles of hurricanes; and issue warnings of landslides as a result of following

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Table 3.5  H-IIA test and applications launches 29 Aug 2001 4 Feb 2002 10 Sep 2002 14 Dec 2002 26 Feb 2005 24 Jan 2006 18 Feb 2006 18 Dec 2006 23 Feb 2008 23 Jan 2009 17 May 2012 27 Feb 2014 24 May 2014 29 Oct 2018

Laser test payload Tsubasa/DASH DRTS/Kodama USERS ADEOS 2/Midori 2 MTS 1R/Himawari 6 ALOS/Daichi MTS 2/Himawari 7 ETS VIII/Kiku 8 WINDS/Kizuna GOSAT/Ibuki GCOM-W/Shizuku GPM-C ALOS 2/Daichi 2 GOSAT 2/Ibuki 2

All from Tanegashima

especially heavy rainfalls. The mission was to last into the 2030s. Its 3D colour maps of rainfall are especially graphic. Under the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMap) system, there is a real-time map of rainfall and at the other extreme, drought (Table 3.5).

3.25 Conclusions: A Wide-Spectrum Programme The establishment of NASDA (1969) was a formative moment in the Japanese space programme, which progressed to a wide-scale space programme with ever larger, licensed rockets, developing space technology and applications for communications and forecasting. The emphasis on technology and electronics testing (e.g. Kiku) brought Japan to the cutting-edge of modern industrial societies. The fact that Japan was the third country to reach geosynchronous orbit symbolized how far it came in a short period. Japan emerged as one of the most technically developed countries in the world, the space programme bringing immediate, modernizing benefits: television, telephone, forecasting and observation of land and sea. These outcomes showed the benefit of what some political scientists called ‘techno-nationalism’ – the use of technology to modernize society, industry and economy. Indeed, there was agreement that these space applications ‘made life better’ in practical applications for the ordinary people. In recent years, Japan came to the fore in missions to tackle the ever-looming challenge of climate change. Despite a late start, Japan’s technology was at least as good as any other space-faring nation. The setbacks experienced on the way were not unique to

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Japan, for unforgiving rocketry and satellites affected all the spacefaring nations. With the H-I and H-II, Japanese rockets became ever more indigenous, an experience that had a steep learning curve and many disappointments. While the Exchange of notes put Japan in a subordinate position to the US, with humiliating blackbox experiences, there is a convincing argument that progress would have been much slower otherwise. American technology may have saved Japan from some of the painful learning curve of early failures that afflicted other countries, but the vulnerability of Japan to the vicissitudes of the American relationship was starkly illustrated by the ruthless §301American elimination of its domestic communications satellite business. An intriguing footnote to the indigenization of the H-II story was a 235-page US National Science Foundation (NSF)/NASA report with the understated title JTEC panel report of space and trans atmospheric propulsion technology (Merkle 1990). Believing that ‘the nation must do more to monitor Japanese research’ this was one of a series of assessments dating to 1984, attracting NASA, NSF and defence funding. The report included extensive field visits, with Japanese cooperation. The report was an insightful, snapshot-in-time, in-depth technical assessment, commending Japan for successfully indigenizing American technology, which enabled low development costs, rapid progress and high reliability. The panel rated the quality of Japan’s space industry highly – but it was impossible not to be struck by US concern that its ally should be kept under such a watchful eye.

References Carter, J (2022): Betelgeuse’s ‘Great Dimming’ had an unlikely observer – a Japanese weather satellite. www.space.com, 1st June 2022. Cass, Ronald: Velvet fist in an iron glove – the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988. Regulation, winter 1991. Cork, L (2013): One last look at GPM. Goddard View, vol 9, 1§15, November 2013. Hyashi, T; Yokoyama, K & Hosokawa, S: Whale Ecology Observation Stellite (Kanta-­ kum) system. Space Japan Review, §32, December 2003/January 2004. Ishikawa, N (2023): Space and adventure, the known unknown. JAXAs, March 2023. Kawamoto, C (2013): Health checkup of the Earth from space – Shizuku application. PPT, JAXA, 19th June 2013. Lele, Ajey (2013): Asian space race – rhetoric or reality? Springer India. Maharaj, A (2013): An overview of NASA-Japan relations from pencil rockets to the International Space Station and NASA and the politics of Delta launch vehicle technology transfer to Japan in John Krige, Angelina Long Callahan and Ashok Maharaj

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(eds): NASA in the world  – fifty years of international collaboration in space. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. Masahiko, S; Kosuge, T; van Fenema, P, Legal implications on satellite procurement and trade issues between Japan and the United States. Presentation Institute of International Space Law Conference (undated). Merkle, C (1990): JTEC panel report of space and transatmospheric propulsion technology. Baltimore, Loyola College. Parry, D (2010): Domestic goals and politics – the twists and turns of Japan’s space programme. Spaceflight,vol 51, §10. October 2010. Sato, Y (2012): Managing the interface between politics and technology  – Itokawa Hideo, Shima Hideo and the early Japanese space programmes. Historia Scientiarum, March 2012. Shepaschenko, Dmitry et al (2021): Russian forest sequesters substantially more carbon than previously reported. Scientific reports, nature.com, accessed 4th August 2021. Sturges, W (1964) : Department is host to US, Japanese scientists. Department of State: Newsletter, August 1964. See also International Federation of Automatic Control: 40th anniversary newsletter, 1957–1997. Suga, T (1998): Hideo Shima, obit. Japanese Rail & Transport Review, §16, June 1998. Sugita, N & Ho, D (2022): Steering space activities for global benefits – a critical study of the Asia-Pacific framework for prospective space development. Presentation, International Astronautical Congress, Paris, 2022. Taniguchi, D; Yamazaki, K; & Uno, S (2022): The great dimming of Betelgeuse seen by the Himawari meteorological satellite. Nature Astronomy Letters, 30th May 2022. Voiland, A (2011): First-of-its-kind fluorescence map offers a new view of the world’s plants. Goddard View, vol 7, §3, June 2011. Watanabe, H (2012): Japanese space policy during the 1970s – a road to autonomy by modifying the Japan-US space cooperation agreements. Presentation, 45th International Astronautical Congress, Cape Town, 2012;

4 Deep Space

4.1 From Pheasant Tail to Comet Halley 1985–6 marked the first year since the start of the space age that a major regular comet approached the inner solar system. Comet Halley, the most famous of all, named after Astronomer Royal Edmond Halley who first characterized cometary orbits, had first been observed as far back as 240 BC. Since then it had been seen 28 times, every 76 years (the appearance in 164 BC was missed). Several countries prepared space missions to intercept or pass Comet Halley around its closest approach to the Sun, or perihelion passage, due on 9th February 1986. Halley was not Japan’s first experience of a comet. On 30th December 620, a red-coloured fan shape appeared in the sky, like a pheasant’s tail, one of the oldest known recorded astronomical observations, recently analyzed by Ryuho Kataoka of the Department of Polar Science in the School of Multidisciplinary Studies at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies for Polar Research and published in the Sokendai Review of Culture and Social Studies as Pheasant tail – consideration of the shape and red sign in the Nihon Shoki. The United States, the leader in interplanetary exploration, was, ironically the only country not to send a probe to comet Halley, though a small Explorer-­ class scientific satellite, ICE, was dispatched into its distant tail. American spending on deep space missions was very low in the late 1970s and a mission to comet Halley was one of its many casualties. The Soviet Union mounted a spectacular double mission, sending probes VeGa 1 and 2 to Venus, where they dropped probes and balloons, before altering course to intercept the

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comet. Most dramatic of all, the European Space Agency fired the Giotto probe right into the head of the comet. For Japan, this was the right opportunity to organize its first deep space mission. These would be the first deep space probes to use solid-fuelled rockets. Two missions were organized – a pathfinder and a main probe. Mission director was Professor K Hirao of the Planetary Research Division of the ISAS Tokyo laboratory, while science director was the X-ray astronomy pioneer Minoru Oda, who became director of ISAS at this time. The spacecraft used lightweight carbon fibre reinforced plastic and were assembled at the ISAS Sagamihara space facility. Because comet Halley had not timed its visit to the inner solar system to suit the southern Japanese fishermen, delicate negotiations took place for a breach in the normal regulations to permit out-of-­season launches to chase the comet. The pathfinder, called MS-T5, was to fly eight  months before the main probe, called Planet A. MS-T5 weighed in at 141 kg, carried three experiments to detect plasma wave instability, measure the solar wind and analyze the structures of the interplanetary magnetic field. Planet A was to close to within 10,000 km of the comet. It was small, able to carry only 10 kg of instrumentation, drum-shaped, 70 cm in height and 1.4 m diameter, weighing 135 kg, with solar cells around the side, charge coupled device cameras and a 80 cm diameter high gain antenna on top. The camera was designed to take pictures to a resolution of 30 km during the encounter. Planet A had low-thrust gas jets which gave it the ability to carry out limited course adjustments −10  kg of hydrazine propellant for six 3N thrusters for trajectory correction, attitude and to settle the spin of the spacecraft. 2000 solar cells provided from between 67 and 104 W of electrical power, depending on the distance from the Sun. A new version of the Mu-3 launcher was devised, the Mu-3SII, with two strap-on boosters for additional thrust, making it heavier by 12 tonnes (61 tonnes compared to 48.7), longer (27.8 m compared to 23.8 m), with a doubled payload (up from 300 kg to 770 kg). The SII benefited from improved second and third stages with movable nozzles and an optional kick fourth stage. Although introduced for one mission, it later became the basis of a series of scientific flights (Chap. 2: Space science). Because these probes marked such a step forward for Japan, the naming process attracted unusual attention. The first, MS-T5, Suisei (‘comet’) beat Funade (‘departure’). The second, Planet A, became Sakigake, meaning ‘vanguard’ or ‘pioneer’, because it was the vanguard of a new venture, beating Dasshutsu (‘escape’) and Yabusame (‘horseback archery’). The probes were sent directly into solar orbit, without the use of an Earth parking orbit. Suisei was launched from Uchinoura on 7th January 1985,

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followed by Sakigake on 16th August 1985 at the start of a 20-day window. Three days into its mission, Suisei made the first of a series of midcourse corrections with its small pulse jets. Sakigake concentrated on the area downstream of the Sun to study the solar wind, magnetic fields and plasma waves, approaching to within 7 m km of the comet on 12th March 1986.

Usuda dish. JAXA

Suisei made its closest approach 155,000 km from the head of the comet, on 8th March 1986, just a month after the perihelion passage. Suisei’s instruments noted clearly the moment when the little spacecraft crossed the bow shock generated by the comet against the solar wind. The camera was able to focus on the comet’s nucleus and its hydrogen cloud for a month following the interception and found the rotation period for the comet. The two probes were tracked by the new 64 m deep space antenna constructed at Usuda, in the middle of Honshu, indeed the point in Japan furthest from any sea. It was completed on 31st October 1984 (after the mission was over, Usuda tracked the American Voyager 2 flyby of the planet Neptune in 1989). Usuda was 1450 m above sea level, surrounded by mountains to cut out electronic noise and with a direct line to Sagamihara. Seven years later Sakigake’s orbit intercepted that of Earth, the small spacecraft passing 90,000 km over the Indian ocean. Its motor was used again to reset the spacecraft’s orbit in such a way that it could better study the Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind. The Japanese probes were probably the

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least publicized of the earthly armada which flew to Halley in 1986. They did attract considerable public interest in Japan itself and the Tokyo Broadcasting Service made 16 television programmes on the probes.

4.2 Third to Reach the Moon: Hiten, Hagoromo The success of Sakigake and Suisei gave Japan the confidence to consider further missions outside Earth orbit. In 1987, ISAS formally sought approval from the Space Activities Commission for its first Moon probe to start a wide-­ ranging programme for lunar and planetary exploration. The budget allocated was far less than it would have liked, so ISAS settled on the idea of an engineering test flight every few years, the programme being given the name Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft, or MUSES (but normally written Muses), pronounced Myusezu in Japanese. Project manager was Prof. Kuninori Uesugi. It was ready within 3 years. A new, 20 m antenna was built at Uchinoura to track it. The mission would be the first spacecraft to the Moon since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 had landed in the Sea of Crisis in August 1976 to bring rock samples back to Earth. Muses A would make Japan the third country to launch a Moon rocket and the launch was the fifth of the Mu-3SII.  The ¥4.3bn (€38m) project comprised two spacecraft: –– Mother craft, Muses A, was 193 kg weight, 1.4 m in diameter and 79 cm high. It carried 12 thrusters using 42 kg of hydrazine fuel. Solar cells provided 100 W of power. –– Orbiting sub-satellite, Muses B, 11  kg in weight, 40  cm in diameter, 27 cm high. Because of the importance of the mission, naming was especially important. The launch team struggled until Professor Tomonao Hayashi proposed for the main spacecraft Hiten, ‘celestial nymph’, to go with the orbiter, Hagoromo, ‘noble costume’. Hiten was a subject of Buddha, whose duty was to play music in heaven. It was a drum-shaped object with two antennæ underneath and the little lunar orbiter placed on top. The only scientific instrument carried was a micro-meteoroid detector made in Munich, Germany. The mission was more an engineering than scientific one. The first launch attempt on 23rd January 1990 reached 18 s when technical problems halted the countdown. However, Muses got away the following day, the Mu-3SII first putting the spacecraft into 240–400  km parking orbit

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around the Earth. After two circuits the solid rocket motor fired to place the spacecraft into the first of a set of a highly elliptical Earth orbits looping ever closer outward. The impulse was less than planned, which meant that it had to take an extra orbit to reach the Moon. Worse, during the translunar coast the transmitter on the Hagoromo sub-satellite failed, which meant that no signals would be returned from lunar orbit. On 18th March, 14,900 km behind the Moon and 54 days after launch, the mother craft released the orbiter which fired its own motor to enter lunar orbit. Hagoromo entered lunar orbit of 7400 by 20,000 km. The Kiso tracking observatory at the University of Tokyo was able, with its fine Schmidt camera, to spot the engine burning and confirm that Hagoromo had indeed entered lunar orbit. Hiten continued in its slow, lazy, Earth – Moon curving orbit. By October 1990, its distance from Earth stretched to 1.34 m km. On 19th March 1991 its return trajectory took it 120 km back into the Earth’s upper atmosphere to perform what was in effect the first-ever high-velocity aerobraking manœuvre. Japanese mission controllers decided, in consultation with the American Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, to take advantage of the fact that Hiten still had residual fuel to plan an extended mission. The aerobraking adjusted the orbit in such as way as to swing Hiten back out to the Moon for eventual lunar capture on 15th February 1992. Hiten now entered a lunar orbit of 422–49,200 km, one amended by a plane change 3 months later. The orbit was not a stable one and the small spacecraft began to spiral inward. Rather than let Hiten crash at will, ground controllers used the very last fuel to guide Hiten to its final impact. Hiten eventually hit the Moon near the crater Furnelius on 10th April the following year at 38°S latitude, 5°E longitude. Japan had become (1993) the third nation to hit the Moon after the Soviet Union (1959) and the United States (1962); and the third to enter lunar orbit after the Soviet Union and the United States (both 1966).

4.3 Nozomi to Mars The Planet A mission to Comet Halley was, as the named suggested, the first Japanese planetary-type mission. The Planet B mission was defined as Japan’s first venture to a terrestrial-type planet and was originally a plan to launch a small payload to Venus, the nearest planet and the easiest to reach. The objective changed when it became clear that Mars, although further away, was scientifically more promising.

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Planet B, Japan’s first spacecraft to Mars, was launched on 3rd July 1998. Soon after, it was named Nozomi, or ‘hope’, beating rival names Kasei (‘Mars’) and Akaboshi (‘red star’). The objective was to orbit Mars at an altitude of 300–47,500 km, the low point later adjusted to 130–150 km and transmit data for one Martian year. Fourteen instruments, weighing 33 kg, were designed to send back information on the magnetic field, the structure of the atmosphere (turbulence, motion and seasonal variations) and energetic particles, with a particular view to answering the question why Mars lost its water. Extending international cooperation, the scientific instruments came not only from Japan but also from France, the European Space Agency, the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, the Canadian Space Agency, NASA and Munich Technical University. NASA’s was a neutral gas mass spectrometer to measure the chemical composition of the Martian atmosphere. A Japanese/French camera was carried. Several passes were to be made of Mars’ tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos. In focussing on the Martian atmosphere, Nozomi planned to complement rather than compete with the American and European probes of that period.

Nozomi. JAXA

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The project cost ¥18.6bn (€166m). Although the start of the mission attracted little attention abroad, there was much more excitement at home, where 270,000 people had their names inscribed in miniature on the spacecraft. Its weight was 540 kg, 258 kg dry without fuel, making it one of the smallest spacecraft to travel to Mars. Nozomi was a hexagonal box shape measuring 1.6 m by 1.6 m by 0.6 m with a bell-shaped motor underneath and a dish antenna on top. Nozomi had a 500 kg thrust engine to carry out a complex set of manoeuvres, first in Earth orbit, then in trans-Mars coast and then to subsequently enter orbit around the red planet. 23  min after liftoff, the spacecraft entered a swinging orbit of 703–489,382  km. Its solar panel sprung open. Thin 25  m long radio wire antennas were deployed. Also sticking out was 5 m magnetometer. At a far point out in the trajectory, 300,000  km from its home planet, its cameras were turned on to capture an unusual view: the Earth-Moon system in the same frame. A thin crescent of Earth filled the bottom left of the picture, while in the far right could be made out the crescent of Earth’s Moon. On 24th September, as it came near to the Moon, it used lunar gravity to swing the spacecraft into an even more extreme orbit, as far out as 1.7  m  km. Cameras clicked to return spectacular pictures of the farside of the Moon, picking out the Moscow Sea and the pitch black floor of crater Tsiolkovsky. This was in preparation for a manœuvre on 20th December to nudge it out of the Earth-Moon system and on its way to Mars. Nozomi flew around the Moon at a distance of 2809 km on 18th December and then, firing its little engine, passed 1003 km from Earth two days later. Now the trouble began. The burn at perigee proved insufficient to kick the spacecraft onto a transMars path. It later transpired that the valve supplying oxidizer had failed to open sufficiently, wasting fuel and not producing sufficient thrust either. As a result, a second burn had to be made. This failed to rectify the situation and it turned out that the fuel supply had now been severely depleted. Despite this, ground controllers calculated that they could still find a way of reaching Mars orbit, but it would take many years. The burn had placed Nozomi on a slow solar orbit, one which would involve three orbits of the Sun, a swing by Earth in December 2002 and June 2003, sufficient to eventually reach Mars sometime in either December 2003 or January 2004, four years late. Ground controllers were still confident that the spacecraft’s equipment would remain in sufficiently good condition to carry out its delayed mission in full. Now nature intervened and a severe solar flare on 21st April 2002 badly damaged Nozomi’s electrical systems. The computer command and control systems survived, but were working on much reduced power. Worst, the flare

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shorted the heating system, causing the hydrazine fuel to freeze and this was ultimately to prove the fatal blow. The hydrazine would thaw out in the heat of the inner solar system, but it was more than likely to freeze up again at Martian distances. Telemetry was lost on 26th April 2002 and the beacon went down the following month (15 May–14 July), again on 8th July. The S-band also went down, although they could still use X-band at some angles. One of the power supply units failed, so the heater was lost and control became more difficult. Nozomi swung by Earth at 30,000 km on 21st December 2002 and again on 19th June 2003, before heading to its decisive meeting with Mars. Nozomi approached Mars at a distance of about 1000 km on 9th December 2003. Controllers still hoped that they might be able to fire its motor for a Mars orbit insertion. When the time came, though, Nozomi did not respond to commands and was presumed lost. It seems likely that communications had broken down some time before, but ground controllers clung to the hope that they could somehow retrieve something from the mission. It was not the only victim of what the space community called the ‘galactic ghoul’ that lurked near Mars snaring unwary spacecraft, for Britain’s Beagle 2 explorer was lost only ten days later. The mission was formally declared over on 19th December. An investigation into the mission concluded in May 2004 but struggled to find a single cause. In the end, it was the least likely of the three Asian spacefaring nations that got to Mars next, India, its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) arriving in October 2014. For the 2020 window to Mars, Japan at one stage planned a 100 kg micro-satellite made by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) to detect subsurface moisture. In the event, Japan did fly a probe to Mars that year  – but for the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The 1350 kg Al Amal (‘Hope’) probe was Arabia’s entry to planetary exploration, although the spacecraft itself was built largely in the United States. Al Amal was launched by the H-IIA on 19th July 2020, which sent it safely on its way to Mars, arriving in Mars orbit the following 8th February. Hope was one of the success stories of new decade, building up a new map of Mars, taking eye-watering close-up images of the moon Deimos and building up a picture of the dynamics of the Martian atmosphere, with multi-gigabyte data releases in 2023.

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Al Amal (Hope) launched by Japan. JAXA

4.4 Rendezvous with an Asteroid: Hayabusa Despite the disappointing outcome, Nozomi attracted plaudits for trying to achieve much with a small spacecraft using imaginative trajectories. Even more ambitious was the next interplanetary probe, which also encountered its fair share of difficulties. This was the third in the Muses series, Muses C, which travelled to a 535 m diameter asteroid. The idea of an asteroid mission dated to a design study in 1985. At the time this was considered too difficult and the design group called themselves Shifuku, ‘people who toil in obscurity without gain’. However, the idea would not go away and it was endorsed by the Space Activities Commission in 1995 under the Step into the unknown programme. Three targets were considered, the one chosen being 1988SF36, a small but typical S-class (siliceous or stony) asteroid, abundant in the inner asteroid belt, so it was hoped that the sample would tell us much about the class as a whole. C-class (carbonaceous or chondrite) are more common, 75% of asteroids, the others being by M-class (metallic), P-class (primitive) and D-class (dormant, most further out than the main belt, possibly former comets). It was originally proposed to launch two probes together, in case one did not work, but this was too expensive.

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Hayabusa. Author

Lacking the lifting power for a chemically fuelled spacecraft, the Japanese went for little-tested but lighter electric xenon engines. Project manager was Junichiro Kawaguchi, born 1955, an aeronautical astronautical engineer in ISAS, an expert in applied flight dynamics and control systems. His motto was ‘Do what others don’t do’ which explains much about the mission (Nishiura 2011). The minister responsible was skeptical of the benefits of the flight, but reluctantly agreed. Hayabusa was not the original name of the spacecraft, nor indeed was 1988SF36 the final name of the asteroid. In a revival of the cartoon controversy earlier, 60% of the electorate voted for Atom, an abbreviation of Iron Arm Atom Astroboy, a character from Osamu Tezuka. At the committee meeting, Professor Kuninori objected, saying that Atom sounded like the atomic bomb. Second on the list was Hayabusa, which symbolised a bird swooping on its target, but it was also the name of Hideo Itokawa’s Ki 43 fighter plane – and an overnight sleeper train on Japanese railways. At that very moment, though, the international astronomical authorities agreed to 1988SF36 being called asteroid Itokawa, a good omen, so that settled it for Hayabusa, just in time for the takeoff. Originally to fly in 2002, it was delayed six months because of the fishing season. Muses C, Hayabusa was eventually launched 9th May 2003 from Uchinoura. The Mu-5 sent the 510  kg, €150m Hayabusa on a huge loop around the solar system that would swing out to the asteroids, firing its ion propulsion system almost continuously. Mission control was Sagamihara. Like Nozomi and Hiten before it, Hayabusa followed a complex series of manœuvres to reach its target. Hayabusa flew past Earth at a distance of 3700 km in May 2004, its gravity giving it a push outwards and testing its cameras as it did so. By end of August 2005 it was 35,000 km from asteroid

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Itokawa and closing. On the 15th August though, a reaction wheel failed, a warning of what was to come. On 12th September, the chemical thrusters were fired to stop it in its track, slowing it down to 20 km from the asteroid, where it began to take its first pictures, finding that the potato shaped object was slowly rotating. Hayabusa entered a 18 km to 20 km orbit around Itokawa, with two months to prepare for the crucial landing operation. Asteroids such as Itokawa have such a low gravity that one cannot land there in the normal sense: investigating them required a hovering descent to the surface, assisted by the prior deployment of markers and a tiny 591 g nanoprobe lander called MINERVA, the size of a child’s toy. To prevent their bouncing off the surface in the low gravity, the markers had the same design as a bean bag to absorb energy on impact. On 4th October, another reaction wheel failed.

Hayabusa marker descending. JAXA

Hayabusa made its approach on 4th November 2005. Things began to go wrong, for another reaction control wheel failed, which meant that the altimeter could not be pointed. To avoid a collision, the spacecraft was recalled and backed away again to 700 m. On 9th November, at 500 m, it released a marker but it did not land. A second approach was made on 12th November. This time, at 500 m, the first of three 10 cm markers was released to descend gently to the surface and provide a reference point for the sampling operation, but it missed the asteroid and drifted away into space. The 4 cm MINERVA lander was released, but was deployed at too high an altitude, 55 m above the asteroid, missed, drifted away and was lost. Then Hayabusa retreated to 5 km.

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Hayabusa lands on Itokawa. JAXA

On the third approach, on 19th November, a second marker was released, this time reaching the surface. This was a sufficient guide for Hayabusa to make its own descent, touching down on Itokawa at 2010, bouncing back, settling down again (2130) and then taking off again (2158). No sampling operation seems to have been carried out though. All this time, Hayabusa was 280 m km from Earth. Not only did the sheer distance present control problems, but Hayabusa was in line of sight with Usuda mission control in Japan only 8 h a day. The final approach was made on 25th November. This time, Hayabusa closed in from its parking orbit at 12 cm/s, cutting its speed to 6 cm/s when it was 40  m out. The laser range finder was turned on at 30  m and soon Hayabusa reached the surface, touching down in an area called the Muses Sea. Once contact was reported, a small charge was detonated to blast débris into a receiver cone, followed by a command to ascend. Things went wrong again at this stage, for one of the thrusters malfunctioned and two of the three remaining reaction control wheels began to operate erratically. It was uncertain if samples had been collected.

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Hayabusa collector. Author

No one is still really sure what happened next. It is possible that the spacecraft spun out of control when lifting off the asteroid. We do know that there was a major anomaly, contact was lost and the spacecraft went into safe mode. Not until the 29th November did the probe acknowledge a signal through its lowgain antenna. There was a burst of transmission, weak and interrupted at times, at 8 bytes/s, on 1st December, but with bad news: there had been a fuel leak, attitude control trouble, a loss of electrical power, a battery discharge and a dangerous loss of temperature. On the 2nd December, the command was sent to restart the chemical engine, which flared into life briefly and then turned off. It was then written off. More bad news: the high gain antenna was drifting out of alignment with Earth and the following day an emergency command was sent to use the electric engine to restore the alignment. This worked and data levels were restored to 256 bytes/s on the 5th, sufficient for ground control to get the probe to replay the record of the landing. The computer memory did not show that samples had been collected – it was possible that they had – but it had been wiped by the anomaly on the 27th. On the 6th December, mission control calculated that Hayabusa was 550 km from Itokawa, 290 m km from Earth, returning at a leisurely 5 km/h and due to soon drift out of line of sight for three months.

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According to the project manger, the probe was still alive, but communications were seriously damaged and it seemed to be tumbling: ‘it is almost a miracle that it functions at all’. Project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi recalled the awful sinking feeling as the signals got weaker and weaker. Was this the end? The odds seemed to be against. Finally on 8th December communications were lost. It was a gloomy end-of-year holiday. Usuda kept bombarding Hayabusa with signals, no less than 15,000 commands. Much to their surprise and delight, mission controllers unexpectedly received fresh signals from Hayabusa on 26th January 2006 and got a precise fix on the probe on 6th March, some 330 m km distant. Not only that, but the spacecraft unloaded 1500 high definition images of the asteroid. Power levels were low, four batteries were not working but the ion engines still appeared to be in working order with 42 kg of xenon left. The xenon gas propellant was commanded on to try to restore attitude control, a procedure never before envisaged. The engines were duly commanded in February when they already had 31,000  h on the clock, again in April and October. An important and tricky task still to be done was to transfer the sample to the tiny 42 cm return cabin, but this went smoothly.

Hayabusa ion engine. Author

Using the engine for course manoeuvres was another matter, for the spacecraft had to be entirely stable, something which had to be achieved very slowly and patiently. Cruise back to Earth officially began on 25th April 2007, even

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though only one control reaction wheel was available. Hayabusa made a successful midcourse correction on 27th April 2009. In October, neutralizer in one of the ion engines began to fail and on 4th November had shut down and could not be reignited. On 19th November, though, controllers managed to get the other ones working again through a system of cross-operation – running a bypass circuit, an ingenious idea. They functioned from there onward until 27th March 2010. By April 2010, the spacecraft was only 24 m km from home in a solar orbit of 0.983 by 1.654 Astronomical Units ((AU) one AU being the distance of Earth from the Sun), 1.7°. At this stage, the International Astronomical Union agreed that 14 craters on the asteroid be named, all with Japanese names for the first time. On 5th June 2010, Hayabusa made its final correction 1.9 m km out from Earth, the last task for the engines, to align it perfectly for reentry. On 12th June, Hayabusa entered the Earth-Moon system, first passing the Moon.

Hayabusa last view of Earth. JAXA

The recovery team had set up in the Woomera desert on 5th June. On the big day, 13th June, at 1506 the Subaru telescope photographed Hayabusa 170,000 km out from Earth at magnitude 22. At 1951, Sagamihara sent the command to release the 17 kg cabin. Back in Japan, over a million anxious viewers were glued to their televisions. In mission control, they had gathered in teams and groups, nervously hoping for the best. Even an official who had earlier been so skeptical of the mission turned up, with his young son.

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Hayabusa cabin. Author

Reentry took place at at 200  km up when travelling at 12.2  km/s. The cabin entered blackout and the signal monitors went blank. Entry speed was 12  km/s. At 2251 that evening, the NASA airborne observatory spotted a fireball, relayed directly to the nail-biting mission controllers in Japan. The fireball burned, fiery chunks breaking away as they were consumed, until there was nothing left...until a smaller, steady dim light could be seen lower down making a steady, perfectly straight path through the upper atmosphere: the tiny cabin, relieving the unbearable tension among the controllers.

Hayabusa fireball. NASA

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The main spacecraft burned up at 2252, while the cabin endured heat up to 20,000 °C. Its heat shield was made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic with carbon phenolic resin, materials used in sports equipment, aircraft and kitchen goods. It barrelled through and survived reentry, sensed air at 5 km altitude, dropped its heat shield, deployed its parachute and activated its beacon. Hayabusa dropped into a windless, still desert, making tracking easy. It was down in the Australian outback at 2312. Originally, it was thought that it might take up to two weeks to find the cabin in the brush and red-soiled outback. At 2356 came the joyous news that the cabin and its parachute had been sighted by the recovery helicopter. The recovery team in blue hazchem type suit, helmets and vizors moved in to safe the cabin, parachute and pyrotechnics. The following day, the heat shield and back plate were located. The cabin was cleaned and packed on the 16th, containerized on the 17th, departed for Haneda on an executive jet and arrived back at Sagamihara on the 18th.

Hayabusa return over Australia. JAXA

Launched in 2003, Hayabusa had made one of the most extraordinary journeys across the solar system, spending September to November 2005 orbiting and landing on an asteroid and surviving a long series of propulsion

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difficulties. According to two of the its leaders, the mission experienced much difficulty but also got some luck too (Kawaguchi and Kuninaka 2010). In August 2010, the Emperor and Empress visited the exhibition of Hayabusa objects in Tsukuba. During the edge-of-your-seats perilous moments of the mission, Japanese people had followed the mission closely on radio and television: no wonder that crowds later came to see the return cabin on display. The Hayabusa team received the Wernher von Braun Memorial Award to recognise the first return mission from an asteroid, the first recovery of an asteroid sample and the first ion-powered round trip. It was presented to project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi, Mu designer Hiroki Matsuo and Suisei and Hiten designer Kuninori Uesugi. At the autumn 2011 International Astronautical Federation in Prague, no one was surprised that Hayabusa was proclaimed the outstanding scientific achievement of the previous year. Hayabusa made the cover of Science and was later voted as one of the world’s top ten scientific achievements. Were there even any samples? Additionally, there was the fear of contamination during recovery and that they would be mistakenly analyzing the Australian desert instead. The sample-catcher was made of duralium, pure aluminium and stainless steel, to prevent any cross-contamination from Earthly substances. The actual examination chamber was small, 5 cm diameter, 6  cm tall, ‘the size of a whiskey glass’ and put under a Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope. The investigating team members had hoped to see sugar-size granules but were at first disappointed when nothing was visible coming out of the two compartments of the sample catcher. They then gently rubbed a 5 mm wide spatula around its walls, locating and scraping out the first particles. Turning it upside down and tapping it, others fell out, eventually 1800 particles. The tiny samples were placed in hollows on artificial glass slides measuring 26 by 40  mm, staying in place through the force of static electricity. It took 5 months to examine and label each particle in a clean room limited to ten people at a time, with three levels of anti-contamination protection. Itokawa soon become one of the best known asteroids in the solar system, full of surprises. What took them aback most was the absence of craters: instead, the asteroid was covered in boulders. Itokawa had a mixture of smooth and rough terrain, covered in gravel rather than powder. Some surfaces were much more weathered than others. Scientists were surprised by its porous nature of its surface, some 40% like a giant pumice stone. The asteroid looked as if it was the product of collisions and it was called a ‘rubble-pile asteroid’. Its density was 1.9  g/cm3, the surface uniform but lighter and darker

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according to the level of space weathering. Making sense of the material was a story that was to evolve over the following years.

Hayabusa grain. ESA

To meet the global thirst for information, the outcomes of the mission were put up on a mission science website. The first findings were presented to the next Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston: –– The body was an ‘olivine-rich mineral assemblage’; there were two types of rock on its surface: rounded breccias and impacted boulders; –– The particles were mainly less than 10  μm, the largest around 100  μm, made of olivine, low-Ca pyroxene, high-Ca pyroxene, plagioclase, Fe sulfide, Fe-Ni metal, chromite and Ca phosphate; –– Its surface had been rapidly weathered by solar wind; –– It had experienced collision, breakup and re-agglomeration, hundreds of millions of years ago, likely generated from a larger body. It was probably the interior part of a larger asteroid; –– There was a 50 m diameter boulder on the surface, Yoshinodai; –– Solar helium, neon and argon were found trapped in the grains, generally less than 8 m years old;

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–– The asteroid was losing its surface at the rate of tens of centimetres every million years and would disappear before the solar system itself; –– There was a slight signal of past water and an infinitesimally small one of carbon. The ongoing investigation became a story in itself. More results were presented at the ISAS conference Hayabusa 2014: Symposium of solar system materials in the ISAS conference hall, visitors passing models of the Mu-5 at the car park on the way in. Scientific papers from Hayabusa were published for many years afterwards (Yoshikawa et al. 2008; Terada et al. 2018). Essentially, the investigators used the samples to construct what Itokawa’s history told us about the solar system. As examples, an American analysis by Fred Jourdan of the Department of Applied Geology at the Curtin School of Mines used a noble gas mass spectrometer to examine two of the dust particles and suggested that Itokawa had broken off a larger asteroid in a collision 2.1bn years ago. In 2016, Toru Matsumoto and his colleagues of JAXA published results of analyzing tiny particles, 10 μm in size, put under X-ray micro-tomography which provided 3D analysis of regolith particles. They came to the conclusion that the original body was, when it formed 4bn years ago, 40 times larger, but then broke into fragments, the present asteroid being all this was left of the original body. Terada outlined what was believed to be the history of the asteroid: a shock event or cataclysmic disruption 1.4bn years ago, after which Itokawa broke free of its larger parent body, part of a broader process of main belt asteroids being supplied inward into the solar system. Even though tiny, the individual particles were able to reveal their past of temperatures (Below). This proved to be too challenging and Japan eventually settled on a more conventional, utilitarian design called the H-II Transfer Vehicle, HTV. HTV was shaped like an unremarkable cylindrical can, 10  m long and 4.4  m in diameter, weighing 16.5 tonnes when fully loaded, including 4.5 tonnes of internal cargo and up to 1.5 tonnes externally. It comprised a propulsion module, an unpressurized middle section with an exposed facility (1.5 tonnes) and a pressurized section (4.5 tonnes) for astronauts to enter (in an alternate configuration, the pressurized section could incorporate the exposed section). About one mission would be required each year. HTV had a hatches 1.2  m and 2.7  m across, much wider than the 80 cm of the Russian Progress freighter, enabling larger pieces of equipment to be brought on board. HTV was the second largest of the supply vehicles, after the European ATV. It was the only vehicle able to carry up the big station batteries in bulk. There was a public naming campaign, Kuonotori or ‘white stork’ emerging as the clear favourite because in ancient mythology the white stork was the carrier of children and things of joy or well-being. The HTV was too heavy for the existing H-IIA rocket, so a larger, more powerful version was developed, the H-IIB. Compared to the H-IIA, the first stage was fatter, 5.2 m in diameter, compared to 4 m and 1 m longer; carried 70% more propellant; and its fairing grew from 12 to 15 m. There were two clustered LE-5A main engines rather than one and four strap-ons were the norm. As an engineering project, the rocket had the guideline of ‘improvement without new technological challenges’, but this did not stop the friction stir welding of parts, nor upgrading the electronics system. Development costs were kept down by using existing H-IIA technologies and design. Even still, the cost was ¥120bn (€763 m), compared for ¥270bn (€1.7bn) for the H-IIA, each production module costing ¥14bn (€89 m). For the HTV and H-IIB, the critical test would be rendezvous in Earth orbit, for which tests had already been carried out by ETS VII Kiku 7 Orihime and Hikoboshi (Chap. 3: Technology, Society, and Economy) and algorithms devised accordingly. The H-IIB would place the HTV in a 350-400 km orbit 20,000 km behind the station for a three-day chase. The HTV would use the American Global Positioning System (GPS) to close to 20 km out. At 500 m, radar lasers would bring the HTV in for the final phase. Coming up to the station from below, it would halt at 10  m in what is called a capture or

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‘berthing’ box 10 m out, where it would be grabbed by the manipulator arm. HTV would bring up to seven tonnes of food, clothes, water, batteries, consumables and scientific equipment up to the Kibo module. The HTV would spend a month docked to the station, where it would be unloaded and then filled with rubbish before being undocked and burned up in the atmosphere.

5.11 From Freedom to ISS American progress on the space station was so slow that by the early 1990s, despite spending a substantial budget, not a single item had been built. Over 1987 to 1992, Japan had spent ¥70bn (€455  m) on preparations, likewise with nothing to show for it. The US Office for Management and Budget (OMB) proposed the cancellation of the project. To save it, NASA initiated a series of redesigns in which it became smaller and smaller, the ABC names of the prospective redesigns telling all (‘austere’, ‘basic’, ‘can’), the titles suggesting the depths of desperation in which the project now found itself. The station survived a congressional vote by the smallest possible margin, 216 to 215 votes in June 1993. The chaos at the American end left NASDA bewildered and angry, questioning American trustworthiness. In reality, the original Japanese scheme for participation was little affected, but it was a period of anxiety, strain and frustration. In the end, the station was saved early in 1993 when newly installed President Clinton quickly decided to find some way to rescue the project. His salvation, though, came from an unexpected direction, Russia, whose Mir 2 space station was also jeopardized by Russia’s accelerating financial crisis. The only way to keep both was by an effective merger of the two programmes, a decision reached remarkably quickly by both countries and over the heads of their partners. The project was redesigned around the ultimate designs of Freedom and Mir 2. Delays then shifted to the Russian side, where the space programme as a whole almost became a collateral casualty of the country’s financial collapse. A new Japanese-American international agreement was formally initialled to take account of the new arrangements, signed by Japan in November 1998, just before the launch of the first module of the station, the Russian Zarya. There was a change of name too, from ‘Freedom’ to, more neutrally, the International Space Station (ISS). US, Canadian, European and Japanese astronauts would fly on Soyuz, Russians on the shuttle, in a system called ‘seat-sharing’. Although most commentaries on the ISS focussed on its construction, equally important were the operating arrangements. The financing of the ISS

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was, under the MOU, governed little by cash payments but principally by complex barter arrangements almost mediæval in nature. Neither Canada, Japan nor Europe had their own access to the station, so they entered into barter arrangements with the US whereby the American shuttle would lift their modules, equipment and astronauts into orbit, in exchange for American access to their scientific modules (Kibo, Columbus). Europe and Japan provided cargo ships to the station (HTV, ATV) in which there would be room for American supplies in turn. Both were provided with astronaut seats, estimated at €251 m a go on the shuttle and €60 m on the Soyuz. Cash did not actually come into play until the shuttle was grounded and then retired (2003-6, 2011-2020), when NASA paid for Soyuz seats, including for its international partners. Japanese operations on the ISS had key landmarks: –– 1998, launch of the first module, Zarya, with subsequent shuttle operations while awaiting the launch of Kibo; –– 2003, the grounding of the shuttle for three years after the Columbia disaster, with reliance on the Russian Soyuz rocket; –– 2008–9, arrival of Japan’s Logistics Module, Pressurized Module and Exposed Facility; and the start of HTV supply missions; –– 2011, the retirement of the shuttle and reliance again on the Russian Soyuz rocket, here called ‘the Russian period’; –– 2020, resumption of access from the United States through the SpaceX Crew Dragon, here called the ‘American period’. By 1998, a mockup of the ISS, including the Japanese JEM, had been assembled in the Mockup and Integration Laboratory in Houston, Texas. Visitors could walk into the spacious module, admire the wide range of experimental equipment and storage racks installed on the walls and note the large airlock designed to facilitate access to the exposed facility. They could examine the robotic arm on the outside of the module and the drum-shaped logistics module on top. Kibo was painted with a red image of the Japanese flag, accompanied by the letters ‘NASDA’ in English and Japanese. As for the real pressurized module, it was completed in the Mitsubishi factory in Nagoya in 2001, brought to Tsukuba for quality inspection and then shipped to Cape Canaveral. The Japanese modules had a long wait at Cape Canaveral, first due to delays in getting the Russian core modules airborne (1998–2000) and second when the shuttle was grounded after Columbia was lost (2003–6). The delays invariably pushed up the cost of Japan’s participation in the ISS. Had the accident

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not taken place, it is likely that the shuttle would have been the main form of transport to the station for American, European and Japanese astronauts for many years, possibly even its whole lifetime. Eventually it was recognized that it was not safe, so additional safety precautions were taken for its last few missions.

Japanese officials in Star Town. Roskosmos

The loss of use of the shuttle meant that Japanese astronauts would now be based in Star Town, Moscow, learning Russian and mastering the Soyuz systems and emergency procedures. Star Town in Moscow became a focus of training, for the astronauts must become entirely familiar with the Soyuz spacecraft in which they would fly. They also visited the Institute for Biological and Medical Problems in Moscow, responsible for the medical side. They went to Sochi on the Black Sea for summertime splashdown and water recovery exercises and later for more rigorous survival training in wintertime forests. Star Town was at its most cosmopolitan during this period, for there was a community of American, Japanese and European astronauts training there, at least two at a time. There were still, of course, training events and activities in Houston. The circuit also took in the European astronaut training centre in Cologne, but Moscow was the core of the programme. In 2011, JAXA even

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closed its Cape Canaveral office and moved it to Moscow. Akira Kosaka was appointed director, then Hitoshi Tsuruma. The Kibo system was so extensive as to require three shuttle launches: –– STS-123, March 2008, the Logistics Module (attic); –– STS-124, June 2008, the main Pressurized Module, Kibo; and –– STS-127, July 2009, Exposed Facility.

Koichi Wakata asleep on ISS. NASA

Japanese astronauts boarded the ISS long before the arrival of Kibo. The first arrival was Koichi Wakata on the STS-92 mission on 11th October 2000 to give Japan early experience of the assembly stage of the ISS. On 26th July 2005, Soichi Noguchi participated in the experimental return-to-flight of the shuttle, the first after Columbia was lost (STS-114). This was Discovery, led by Eileen Collins, the first shuttle woman commander, a brave mission that revealed further foam problems that required fixing, with a yearlong gap before the next mission, STS-121 in July 2006.

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The lengthy period of waiting for Japan finally ended during the spring night of 11th March 2008. At 2.28 am that morning, the shuttle Endeavour soared into the night sky over Cape Canaveral. Its trajectory took it along the east coast and observers in Massachusetts a few minutes later spotted Endeavour as a star tracking over the Atlantic, even noticing the burns of its thruster jets as it manoeuvred into orbit. On the shuttle with six American colleagues on the STS-123 mission was Takao Doi on his second mission. He had been an astronaut since 1985 and had lived in Houston since 1995. Shortly after arriving at the station, the Logistics Module was lifted out of the payload bay and, guided by Takao Doi, temporarily installed the module on the American Harmony module of the station. Takao Doi was the first to enter the attic on 15th March and turned on the equipment 2 days later. Doi returned to Earth on the Endeavour in a night time landing at Cape Canaveral on 27th March. The second mission was the Pressurized Module (PM), Kibo itself, flying on STS-124, Discovery, this time with Akihiko Hoshide, launched on 31st May 2008. Akihiko Hoshide was a trier. He had first applied to be an astronaut when he was a university student, but was turned down; joined NASDA and applied again in 1996, being rejected a second time; and then applied a third time in 1998, his persistence rewarded. He later described the ascent: at first, like a truck rattling along a bumpy road, then, with the boosters separated, like a smooth paved way. Nineteen minutes later, it had crossed the Atlantic and could be seen in the skies of north western Europe, its bright orange tank trailing alongside, following the space station which had crossed over only ten minutes beforehand. Two days later, Discovery had docked with the ISS.  The following day, Hoshide manipulated the station’s robotic arm to gingerly lift Kibo out of the shuttle cargo bay and positioned it on the Harmony pressurized module, close to the European Columbus laboratory, which had arrived earlier that year. It was then locked in place with 16 motorized bolts. On the fifth day of the mission, after checking the seals for pressure, Akihiko Hoshide became the first person to enter Kibo, followed by American astronaut Karen Nyberg, both wearing goggles in case of floating débris that might hurt their eyes. He hung a small curtain outside the hatch, typical for a Japanese home. The rest of the shuttle crew followed, delighted with the huge space of the empty module. They began to turn on the computer, power and cooling systems. Mission control for Kibo was formally transferred to Tsukuba. The module did not remain empty for long, for they quickly began to load it with equipment and fill the experiment racks, Ryutai and Saibo. Fire extinguishers were installed, cables connected and emergency breathing devices attached.

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On the next day, shuttle astronauts Mike Fossum and Ron Garan made the outside of Kibo ready to receive the logistics module, which the next day was transferred to its place on top of Kibo, looking like a hatbox on the cylinder. The spacewalking astronauts deployed a débris shield around Kibo, installed cameras and uncovered the shutters on its windows. Looking through the two portholes at the far end of Kibo, Hoshide then tested out its 10 m long robotic arm. Between the logistics module and Kibo itself, Japan now had the largest new laboratory area on the space station, remaining the largest until the 22-tonne Russian Nauka science module arrived in 2021. For the astronauts, the uncluttered space on the new Kibo was a joy, for they could turn weightless somersaults there without fear of colliding with sensitive equipment, which was still stowed in the racks. There was a congratulatory phone call from prime minister Yasuo Fukuda.

Kibo on orbit with its attic. JAXA

Kibo was soon operational (Barry 2008). The first experiment on Kibo was in fluid physics, making what was called a liquid bridge which cannot be done on the ground, with the next phase focussing on crystallization and biological experiments. In a significant step forward for Japanese piloted spaceflight, Koichi Wakata was brought up to the station on the shuttle Discovery 15th March 2009 on STS-119, spending 4 months there (138 days). It was the first long-duration Japanese stay on the station. His main work was in the field of medical experiments, cell biology, testing the Japanese robotic arm, Earth

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photography, acoustics and crystallization. He took bisphosphonate to test whether it slowed bone density reduction, a key factor in osteoporosis. He undertook three space walks. This marked the expansion of the ISS permanent crew from three to six. He was there effectively for the operationalization of the Japanese module. When it was time for him to come home in July, the shuttle Endeavour had just arrived there with the porch, or Exposed Facility, which it successfully put in place. He came home on Endeavour on 31st July (STS-127). On his return, Her Majesty the Empress composed a poem in his honour.

Kibo Exposed Facility. Davide Silvolella

JAXA used a liaison office in Houston, both for the Kibo preparation and its subsequent operation. The biggest problem was a practical one: as people were finishing their working day in Houston, JAXA staff were arriving in their offices in Japan, so that the liaison office had to work late. That was the only downside. Japanese staff assigned to Houston spoke of the American hospitality that they received and the joys of exploring their wonderful national parks. Because there were not always Japanese astronauts aboard the ISS, Kibo could still be used, under their access agreement, by the Americans during their absence.

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5.12 Cubesat Revolution Perhaps the biggest unexpected innovation of Kibo was launching small satellites. The idea of pushing small satellites out of orbital stations was not new. As far back as 1984, a small satellite built by students, Iskra, had been released from the Soviet Union’s Salyut orbital station. Orbiting stations required regular freighter missions and if there were spare space, then a small satellite could easily be carried. Packed snugly in soft packaging, they got a less violent ride than had they been shot into orbit on an ordinary rocket, moreover to the ISS altitude of 400 km. Not only that, but getting a ride on a cargo ship could happen sooner than waiting for a rocket launch with spare capacity. Control was simplified insofar as all the astronaut had to do was check that it was turned on, put it in an airlock and push it away. Cubesats were part of the micro-satellite revolution that began in the 1980s, when miniaturization made it possible to build ever-smaller satellites (Microsatellites in Chap. 6: Change in Direction). Cubesats were at the lower end of size and weight range, generally being hand-held, a few kilos in weight, distinguishable from other micro-satellites by being in the standard shape of a cube, with sizes classified accordingly (1 U, 2 U, 6 U, up to 12 U etc). Cubesats, typically costing €5 m to build, opened up opportunities to students and developing countries to build and orbit small satellites in ways that would not otherwise have been possible. Kibo offered the best opportunity on the station for deploying cubesats. The idea of launching cubesats from Kibo was developed practically by Space BD and Mitsui of Tokyo with the American NanoRacks company. They developed a rectangular box attached to the end of the Japanese remote arm with a hinged door and spring and separation mechanism. This was the Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (SSOD). Deployment speed was