Greetings from Japan! This is information on the Japanese first military satellites. According to news media, the Japanese first reconnaissance satellites will be launched at 10:27 JST(01:27 GMT), Friday March 23(that is today!) from Tanegashima Island, which is located off Kagoshima City in southern Japan. The H2A rocket will carry two IGSs(Information Gathering Satellites) into a Sun-synchronous sub-recurrent orbit, which is a circular polar orbit. The altitude of the orbit is estimated to be 400-500 km. The orbit is designed to return to the same point every 4 days. One of the two satellites carries optical sensors, while the other carries radars. They are supposed to gather information on North Korea's military move. Unfortunately, the resolution of the optical sensors are more than 1 meter(maybe much more), which means that it was much cheaper for the Japanese government to buy photos of the civilian satellites like IKONOS!? ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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