Posted: Fri, Feb 28, 2014, 7:40 AM ET (1240 GMT)
An H-2A rocket successfully launched early Friday a joint American-Japanese earth sciences satellite designed to study global precipitation patterns. The H-2A lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center on schedule at 1:37 pm EST Thursday (1837 GMT Thursday, 3:37 am local time Friday) and released the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite into low Earth orbit about 16 minutes later. The GPM "core observatory" spacecraft, built at NASA Goddard with a radar instrument provided by JAXA, will map global precipitation every three hours, supporting weather forecasting and climate monitoring. The H-2A launch also placed several small secondary payloads into orbit.
