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Japan Launches the Smallest Rocket to Put a Satellite in Orbit

posted by mrpg on Monday February 05 2018, @07:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the sugoi-ze! dept.

takyon writes:

Souped-up sounding rocket lifts off from Japan with tiny satellite

A modified sounding rocket originally designed to loft science instruments on high-altitude suborbital arcs blasted off Saturday from the Uchinoura Space Center in southern Japan and soared into orbit to become the world's smallest satellite launcher.

[...] Standing just 31 feet (9.5 meters) tall and spanning around 20 inches (52 centimeters) in diameter, the SS-520-5 rocket was modest by launcher standards. With Saturday's successful flight, the solid-fueled booster became the smallest rocket to ever put an object in orbit around Earth.

A student-built shoebox-sized CubeSat named TRICOM 1R — weighing in at about 10 pounds (3 kilograms) — was mounted on top of the SS-520-5 rocket for liftoff from the Uchinoura Space Center in Japan's Kagoshima prefecture.

[...] The SS-520 is designed to propel more than 300 pounds (140 kilograms) of science research instrumentation to an altitude of nearly 500 miles (800 kilometers) for a few minutes of exposure to space before falling back to Earth. Engineers added a third stage on top of the basic SS-520 booster to give it the capability to reach orbital speeds of more than 17,000 mph (27,000 kilometers per hour).

Also at The Verge.

Related: Rocket Lab's Second "Electron" Rocket Launch Succeeds, Reaches Orbit

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by mmlj4 on Monday February 05 2018, @12:39PM (1 child)

    by mmlj4 (5451) on Monday February 05 2018, @12:39PM (#633255) Homepage

    "A student-built shoebox-sized CubeSat named TRICOM 1R — weighing in at about 10 pounds (3 kilograms)". Apparently a Japanese kilogram is 3.3 pounds? Good to know. I wonder if I can figure out how to short-sell and make a bundle.

    --
    Need a Linux consultant [joeykelly.net] in New Orleans?

  • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday February 05 2018, @02:22PM

    by Aiwendil (531) on Monday February 05 2018, @02:22PM (#633277) Journal

    That conversion makes sense if the reporter (or whoever made the conversion) used a well-versed conversion system, a libra (lb) (the original pound) is about 329g which would make it (3 / 0.329) ~ 9.11 pound, and then add some agressive rounding away from zero...