spacetoday.net: H-2A launches Japanese and Korean satellites

Posted: Fri, May 18, 2012, 6:44 AM ET (1044 GMT)
H-2A launch of Shizuku and KOMPSAT-3 (JAXA)

A Japanese H-2A rocket launched four satellites on Friday, including a Japanese earth sciences spacecraft and a South Korean remote sensing satellite. The H-2A 202 lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 12:39 pm EDT Thursday (1639 GMT Thursday, 1:39 am local time Friday) and placed four satellites into Sun-synchronous orbits. The vehicle's primary payload was the GCOM-W1, or Shizuku, satellite, a Japanese spacecraft designed to monitor circulation changes in the world's oceans. Also onboard was the Korea Multipurpose Satellite 3 (KOMPSAT-3), also known as Arirang-3, which will provide high-resolution imagery. The rocket also carried two smaller satellites, SDS-4 and Horyu-2. The launch was the first time that the H-2 launched a non-Japanese satellite under a commercial arrangement.