{"id":14802,"date":"2017-03-14T18:59:54","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T10:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/poor-weather-forecast-delays-japanese-spy-satellite-launch\/"},"modified":"2017-03-14T18:59:54","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T10:59:54","slug":"poor-weather-forecast-delays-japanese-spy-satellite-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/poor-weather-forecast-delays-japanese-spy-satellite-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor weather forecast delays Japanese spy satellite launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_22998\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-22998\" style=\"width: 675px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-22998\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/fef4adb58ae12d1016a50e1f9f1fa2f8.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"675\" height=\"448\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/fef4adb58ae12d1016a50e1f9f1fa2f8.jpg 675w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/fef4adb58ae12d1016a50e1f9f1fa2f8-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 675px) 100vw, 675px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-22998\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">File photo of an H-2A rocket inside the assembly building at the Tanegashima Space Center. Credit: JAXA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Japanese officials have delayed the launch of a government-owned reconnaissance satellite until at least Friday, local time, because of bad weather predicted over the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.<\/p>\n<p>Liftoff of an H-2A rocket with Japan\u2019s sixth radar intelligence-gathering satellite, officially designated IGS Radar 5, is now scheduled for no earlier than Friday at 0120 GMT (9:20 p.m. EDT on Thursday), the Japanese space agency announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>The launch window extends for nearly 14 minutes, officials said. It opens at 10:20 a.m. Friday Japan Standard Time.<\/p>\n<p>The Japanese space agency, JAXA, is not expected to provide a live webcast of the launch, but spectators sometimes stream H-2A flights online from a more distant viewing post.<\/p>\n<p>The H-2A is expected to place the IGS Radar 5 satellite into a polar orbit around 300 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth, where it will join a fleet of Japanese spy satellites monitoring North Korean and Chinese military activity, assisting in response to natural disasters in Japan, and watching other hotspots around the globe.<\/p>\n<p>Japan\u2019s government surveillance observatories in orbit are part of a program run by the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center, which reports directly to the Japanese government\u2019s executive leadership.<\/p>\n<p>The spacecraft carries a high-tech radar imager capable of peering through clouds and resolving targets in darkness, overcoming the limits of conventional optical spy satellite cameras.<\/p>\n<p>The 174-foot-tall (53-meter) H-2A rocket is fully assembled inside the vertical integration building at Tanegashima, located off the southwestern coast of the Japanese main islands, ready for rollout to Launch Pad No. 1 approximately 12 hours before liftoff.<\/p>\n<p>IGS Radar 5 will be the second consecutive defense-related payload to ride an H-2A rocket into orbit. The DSN 2 communications satellite launched on the last H-2A flight Jan. 24 to relay X-band signals between Japanese military units.<\/p>\n<p>The spacecraft will be the 13th intelligence-gathering satellite to join the the Japanese government\u2019s spy fleet since the program began launches in 2003. Two more satellites were lost in a launch failure, and several more are no longer functioning.<\/p>\n<p>The launch will be the 33rd flight of an H-2A rocket since it began flying in August 2001, and the second H-2A mission this year.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>File photo of an H-2A rocket inside the assembly building at the Tanegashima Space Center. Credit: JAXA Japanese officials have delayed the launch of a government-owned reconnaissance satellite until at least Friday, local time, because of bad weather predicted over the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. Liftoff of an H-2A rocket with Japan\u2019s sixth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[159,1662,3381,2356,3382,377,877,878],"class_list":["post-14802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-earth-observation","tag-h-2a","tag-h-2a-f33","tag-igs","tag-igs-radar-5","tag-japan","tag-jaxa","tag-mhi"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}