Jan 24 2006
From The Space Library
Japan launched into space the Advanced Landing Observing Satellite (ALOS), known as Daichi, on an H-IIA rocket, from Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima in southern Japan, at 10:33 a.m. (JST). ALOS had the capability to produce maps of a scale of 25,000 to 1, without using reference points on Earth’s surface. Japan would also use the satellite for precise regional landcoverage observation, disaster monitoring, and resource surveying. Three instruments aboard ALOS would accomplish these tasks: the Panchromatic Remote-Sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping (PRISM), an optical camera measuring land elevation; the Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2 (AVNIR-2), observing the material that covers land surfaces; and the Phased Array type L–band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR), enabling day-and-night and allweather land observation. Japan had designed ALOS to operate for at least three years, with a program objective for a mission lasting up to five years.
Stephen Clark, “New Earth Observer Launched into Orbit,” Spaceflight Now, 24 January 2006; Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), “Satellites and Spacecraft: Advanced Land Observing Satellite ‘DAICHI’ (ALOS),” 25 February 2009, http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/alos/index_e.html (accessed 12 November 2009); Spacewarn Bulletin, no. 627, 1 February 2006, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacewarn/spx627.html (accessed 14 September 2009).
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