Japan’s H-II A Rocket Blasts Off With Weather Satellite ‘Himawari-9’

Japan has launched the Himawari-9 weather satellite on Wednesday (November 2), with the help of its H-II A rocket. Himawari-9 is the second of two-third generation satellites in Japan's Himawari weather monitoring series. It was lifted off at 3:20 p.m (local time) from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima region.

The spacecraft will conduct the weather observations over the Asia-Pacific regions and will supply the essential data to forecasters from Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South-East Asia and other neighboring regions. Along with Himawari-8, which was launched in October 2014, this new weather satellite is expected to provide significant observational data to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the Ministry of Transport.

The term 'Himawari' means sunflower and it is a series of spacecraft which began in July 1977 with the launch of Geostationary Meteorological Satellite 1 (GMS-1) which took on the name Himawari after reaching the orbit. According to NASA Spacefight.com, GMS-1 was the first one among the five American-built-first-generation satellites. Himawari-9 can capture images of certain areas at a faster rate of 2.5 minutes.

As per a report published in Zee News, The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, LTD postponed the launch of Himawari-9, which was initially scheduled for November 1, due to unfavorable weather conditions. The satellite weighed nearly 3500kgs and it was separated from the rocket at 3:47 p.m. It entered the geostationary transfer orbit successfully with a high point of 35,976 km, low point of 250 km and an orbit inclination of 22.4 degrees.

Himawari-9 is expected to offer detailed and more accurate images of storms, clouds and other weather systems to the forecasters located in Japan and across the Western Pacific. The position of Himawari-9 will be fixed at 140 degrees east longitude for a mission which is scheduled to last up to 15 years for the Japan Meteorological Agency. Himawari-8 and Himawari-9 will replace Japan's last pair of meteorological satellites, MTSAT 1R and MTSAT 2, which were launched in 2005 and 2006 respectively.