JAPAN: Launching of major high-tech satellite to observe the sun and a subprobe to test a solar sail of a 2010 mission to Jupiter

Japan launched on Saturday (September 23) a high-tech satellite on a joint mission with the U.S. and the United Kingdom to explore the sun. Led by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the satellite mission called Solar-B will investigate our solar system's only star in order to improve our understanding of the mechanisms that behind solar flares and eruptions that can have devastating effects on earth's satellite systems and in the worst case - power grids. The 900 kilo satellite was launched off the Uchinoura Space Centre in Kagoshima prefecture, southern Japan on a M-V rocket and headed for a north-south orbit around the earth and will be pointed continuously at the sun. Studying the sun's activity is more and more important these days as the global society increases its dependence on electronical appliances and information networks. "In this modern world, we can't separate communication, broadcast and weather satellite from our life. So it is getting really important to protect satellites from solar eruptions," said Takeo Kosugi, Solar-B project manager at JAXA via video conferencing. While the instruments are mainly geared for the observation of the sun, some 1.4 billion kilometres away from earth, JAXA's Kosugi said, the technology exists to turn the science observatory in to the world's most powerful spy satellite. "As a matter of fact, Solar-B is equipped with a surprisingly high-resolution telescope to observe the sun. In an ideal situation - which is actually difficult as we get infra-red interference - if we develop this further and turn its focus onto the earth, we could make one of the world's most advanced observation satellite. We already have the basics," added Kosugi. There are, however, no plans at the moment for the satellite to monitor anything else but the sun. Saturday's launch however, also released a test solar sail that Japan hopes will power its eventual mission to Jupiter in 2010. A solar sail is a spacecraft without an engine that relies solely on solar winds - high-energy particles released by the sun. Because it carries no fuel and keeps accelerating over almost unlimited distances, some scientists believe it is the technology most likely to someday take us to the stars. Japanese solar sail tests are so far the only real attempts at making this technology work. Scientists in Japan are hoping this test will be successful as the last two have failed.

ITN Source | September 23, 2006

Tags:. .anything. .winds. .understanding. .modern. .however