The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced Friday that the next launch of its new flagship H3 rocket will take place on June 30 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture, with a launch window set for just after noon.
The third launch of the H3 will carry the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-4 (ALOS-4), also known as Daichi-4, the successor to Daichi-2, which was developed by JAXA and Mitsubishi Electric and first launched in 2014 (Daichi-3 was lost during a failed H3 rocket launch last year). Daichi-4 has cost the agency and company approximately ¥32 billion.
The ¥32 billion Daichi-4, designed for high-resolution Earth observation, has a 200 kilometer observation range, four times that of Daichi-2, to enable monitoring in adverse conditions, such as at night and in poor weather conditions.