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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
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 05 2018, @06:07PM
> Not long before that the PRC shot down one of its own satellites. Without a doubt the US shot down that satellite to convey a diplomatic message.
The rest of the world was very happy when the dick-measuring contest stopped after those two samples.
"Before you to the Moon and Mars" targets are a lot less disruptive to actually useful LEO sats.