Japan’s H3 rocket successfully completes its fifth launch
Japan’s space agency JAXA early today successfully launched the sixth satellite in that country’s GPS-type constellation, its new H3 rocket lifting off from the Tanegashema spaceport in south Japan.
This was the rocket’s fifth launch, and the first for Japan this year. The link goes to the JAXA live stream, cued to T-30 seconds. Though it now also provides English translation, JAXA still insists on having an announcer count off every second, several minutes prior to and after launch, something that is incredibly annoying and distracting, and entirely unnecessary.
The 2025 launch race:
14 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
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Japan’s space agency JAXA early today successfully launched the sixth satellite in that country’s GPS-type constellation, its new H3 rocket lifting off from the Tanegashema spaceport in south Japan.
This was the rocket’s fifth launch, and the first for Japan this year. The link goes to the JAXA live stream, cued to T-30 seconds. Though it now also provides English translation, JAXA still insists on having an announcer count off every second, several minutes prior to and after launch, something that is incredibly annoying and distracting, and entirely unnecessary.
The 2025 launch race:
14 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Heartily second your annoyance at the seemingly endless countdown. I haven’t watched all that many JAXA webcasts, but I don’t recall this particular verbal annoyance being a feature of any previous such. If this is, indeed, some mid-level JAXA bureaucrat’s recent innovation one can only hope he sees fit to commit honorable seppuku before the next launch webcast.
Dick Eagleson: This absurd and annoying verbal countdown has been routine for at least all of the H3 launches as well as the last few H2B launches. Before that JAXA didn’t provide a live stream as far as I can remember.
In other words, they haven’t a clue.
I seem to remember an article where there were discussions about docking port designs—where folks from Japan constantly re-did everything.
Pageantry seems to play a role. I think it was Operation Whitecoat that did a more scientific type of research:
https://www.blueridgenow.com/story/news/2004/01/26/adventist-helped-biological-weapons-study/28146747007/
An interesting aside
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/when-apollo-went-japan-180974469/