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!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. 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.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
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/