Japan Launches Satellite for Mapping and Monitoring Disasters

[shugah]

Japan Launches Satellite for Mapping and Monitoring Disasters

Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Japan's space agency launched a satellite on its H-IIA rocket that will be used for mapping and for monitoring disasters and the environment, after two delays due to technical malfunctions.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's eighth H-IIA rocket took off from southern Japan's Tanegashima Space Center at 10:33 a.m. local time today, according to JAXA's Web site.

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The Advanced Land Observation Satellite's remote sensing equipment can produce maps of a scale of 25,000 to 1 without using reference points on the earth's surface, according to the JAXA Web site. It will also be used to monitor disasters across the globe and environmental degradation caused by human activities, the Web site says.

Japan launched the seventh H-IIA rocket on Feb. 26 last year, sending a weather satellite into orbit. The spacecraft had been delayed by more than a year after the previous attempt failed.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000101&sid=aWSXbt5TjrsY&refer=japan