BepiColombo is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to the planet Mercury. The mission comprises two satellites launched together: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and Mio. The mission will perform a comprehensive study of Mercury, including characterization of its magnetic field, magnetosphere, and both interior and surface structure. It was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket on 20 October 2018 at 01:45 UTC, with an arrival at Mercury planned for on 5 December 2025, after a flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and six flybys of Mercury. The mission was approved in November 2009, after years in proposal and planning as part of the European Space Agency's Horizon 2000+ programme; it is the last mission of the programme to be launched.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orbit, and is involved in many more advanced missions such as asteroid exploration and possible human exploration of the Moon. Its motto is One JAXA and its corporate slogan is Explore to Realize.
The M-V rocket, also called M-5 or Mu-5, was a Japanese solid-fuel rocket designed to launch scientific satellites. It was a member of the Mu family of rockets. The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) began developing the M-V in 1990 at a cost of 15 billion yen. It has three stages and is 30.7 m (101 ft) high, 2.5 m in diameter, and weighs about 140,000 kg (310,000 lb). It was capable of launching a satellite weighing 1,800 kg (4,000 lb) into an orbit as high as 250 km (160 mi).
The Uchinoura Space Center is a space launch facility in the Japanese town of Kimotsuki, Kagoshima Prefecture. Before the establishment of the JAXA space agency in 2003, it was simply called the Kagoshima Space Center (鹿児島宇宙空間観測所) (KSC). All of Japan's scientific satellites were launched from Uchinoura prior to the M-V launch vehicles being decommissioned in 2006. It continues to be used for suborbital launches, stratospheric balloons and has also been used for the Epsilon orbital launch vehicle. Additionally, the center has antennas for communication with interplanetary space probes.
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, or ISAS, is a Japanese national research organization of astrophysics using rockets, astronomical satellites and interplanetary probes which played a major role in Japan's space development. Since 2003, it is a division of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
Akatsuki, also known as the Venus Climate Orbiter (VCO) and Planet-C, is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) space probe tasked with studying the atmosphere of Venus. It was launched aboard an H-IIA 202 rocket on 20 May 2010, but failed to enter orbit around Venus on 6 December 2010. After the craft orbited the Sun for five years, engineers successfully placed it into an alternative Venusian elliptic orbit on 7 December 2015 by firing its attitude control thrusters for 20 minutes and made it the first Japanese satellite orbiting Venus.
Hinode, formerly Solar-B, is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Solar mission with United States and United Kingdom collaboration. It is the follow-up to the Yohkoh (Solar-A) mission and it was launched on the final flight of the M-V rocket from Uchinoura Space Center, Japan on 22 September 2006 at 21:36 UTC. Initial orbit was perigee height 280 km, apogee height 686 km, inclination 98.3 degrees. Then the satellite maneuvered to the quasi-circular Sun-synchronous orbit over the day/night terminator, which allows near-continuous observation of the Sun. On 28 October 2006, the probe's instruments captured their first images.
Geotail was a satellite that observed the Earth's magnetosphere. It was developed by Japan's ISAS in association with the United States' NASA, and was launched by a Delta II rocket on 24 July 1992 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to space exploration.
The exploration of Mercury has a minor role in the space interests of the world. It is the least explored inner planet. As of 2015, the Mariner 10 and MESSENGER missions have been the only missions that have made close observations of Mercury. MESSENGER made three flybys before entering orbit around Mercury. A third mission to Mercury, BepiColombo, a joint mission between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the European Space Agency, is to include two probes. MESSENGER and BepiColombo are intended to gather complementary data to help scientists understand many of the mysteries discovered by Mariner 10's flybys.
The N-I or N-1 was a derivative of the American Thor-Delta rocket, produced under license in Japan. The N stood for "Nippon" (Japan). It used a Long Tank Thor first stage, a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries-designed LE-3 engine on the second stage, and three Castor SRMs. Seven were launched between 1975 and 1982, before it was replaced by the N-II. Six of the seven launches were successful, however on the fifth flight, there was recontact between the satellite and the third stage, which caused the satellite to fail.
The Jupiter Magnetospheric Orbiter is a cancelled space probe proposed by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), to undertake detailed in situ studies of the magnetosphere of Jupiter as a template for an astrophysical magnetised disk.
Space research is scientific study carried out in outer space, and by studying outer space. From the use of space technology to the observable universe, space research is a wide research field. Earth science, materials science, biology, medicine, and physics all apply to the space research environment. The term includes scientific payloads at any altitude from deep space to low Earth orbit, extended to include sounding rocket research in the upper atmosphere, and high-altitude balloons.
The Japanese space program originated in the mid-1950s as a research group led by Hideo Itokawa at the University of Tokyo. The size of the rockets produced gradually increased from under 30 cm (12 in) at the start of the project, to over 15 m (49 ft) by the mid-1960s. The aim of the original research project was to launch a man-made satellite.
The Epsilon Launch Vehicle, or Epsilon rocket, is a Japanese solid-fuel rocket designed to launch scientific satellites. It is a follow-on project to the larger and more expensive M-V rocket which was retired in 2006. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) began developing the Epsilon in 2007. It is capable of placing a 590 kg payload into Sun-synchronous orbit.
Arase, formerly known as Exploration of energization and Radiation in Geospace (ERG), is a scientific satellite to study the Van Allen belts. It was developed by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of JAXA. While there was a scientist working on a similar project with the surname Arase, the satellite's name has nothing to do with him but instead named after a river beside the launch point.
EQUULEUS is a nanosatellite of the 6U CubeSat format that will measure the distribution of plasma that surrounds the Earth (plasmasphere) to help scientists understand the radiation environment in that region. It will also demonstrate low-thrust trajectory control techniques, such as multiple lunar flybys, within the Earth-Moon region using water steam as propellant. The spacecraft was designed and developed jointly by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the University of Tokyo.
NASA's Solar Terrestrial Probes program (STP) is a series of missions focused on studying the Sun-Earth system. It is part of NASA's Heliophysics Science Division within the Science Mission Directorate.
