THE JAPAN NEWS


 

MINAMITANE, Kagoshima (Jiji Press) — A ceremony was held on Saturday to mark the 50 years since the first rocket was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture in September 1968.

The ceremony in the Kagoshima town of Minamitane, which hosts the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s space center, was attended by JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa, astronaut Kimiya Yui and other agency officials as well as local residents.

“My next dream is to travel from Tanegashima to space aboard a Japan-made manned rocket,” Yui, 48, said in his commemorative speech. “I want to put aboard Tanegashima people who supported us, to let them look at Earth from space.”

Construction work for the space center started on the Kagoshima island of Tanegashima in 1966, before Okinawa returned to Japan from the postwar U.S. occupation in 1972.

Tanegashima was considered the most suitable location for the space center at that time because it was relatively close to the equator and there was no land east of the island.

On Sept. 17, 1968, a 2.8-meter-long upper-air observation rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center, marking the first rocket launch from the center.

This was followed by the launch of the Kiku-1 satellite on an N-1 rocket achieved with technological support from the United States in September 1975.

Over the past 50 years, a total of 175 rockets lifted off from the space center, including the first H-2 rocket launched in 1994.

Japan is developing the next-generation H-3 rocket series, aiming to launch its first unit in fiscal 2020. Engine combustion tests and other preparations are under way on the island.