Posted on 11/28/2020 7:49:34 PM PST by BenLurkin
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan plans to launch an H-IIA rocket on Sunday, 29 November to deploy a top secret communications satellite to support the country’s reconnaissance and scientific programs.
Liftoff is scheduled for a two-hour window opening at 16:25 local time (07:25 UTC or 02:25 EST) from the Tanegashima Space Center.
The Optical Data Relay Satellite payload aboard this mission will be used to relay data collected by Japan’s fleet of Information Gathering Satellites (IGS) – including both optical and radar-imaging reconnaissance spacecraft – back to Earth for analysis. It is a joint mission with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), who will also use the spacecraft to collect data from scientific satellites in low Earth orbit.
The new satellite replaces Kodama, or the Data Relay Test Satellite (DRTS), which was launched in 2002 and remained in service for 15 years before being decommissioned in August 2017. While Kodama was designed to provide high-speed communications through conventional S-band and Ka-band communications, its replacement also adds optical communications systems to further increase its throughput.
(Excerpt) Read more at nasaspaceflight.com ...
But we can’t run a national election go figure ....maybe it’s time that our kids in school started learning something
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