Japan and Solar System Exploration
Japan has a growing portfolio of solar system investigations, and planned future missions will further expand Japan's position via direct solar system exploration. To date ISAS, rather than NASDA, had been the primary agency involved with such missions. Starting in 1971 with the Shinei (New Star) satellite, ISAS fielded four solar research experiments, culminating with the Yohkoh (Sunbeam) probe, also known as Solar-A, on 30 August 1991 from the Kagoshima Space Center. The 420-kg, 2 m by 1 m by 1 m box-shaped satellite resides in low-Earth orbit (515 km by 745 km, as of 31 December 1994) with four solar sensors: hard and soft X-ray telescopes, a Bragg crystal spectrometer and a wide-band spectrometer. Yohkoh was the first satellite to provide continuous 'video' of events in the X-ray and gamma-ray spectra and has already inundated solar researchers with hundreds of thousands of high-quality images. The particular bands chosen yield data on the activity of high-temperature gases and high-energy phenomena on the Sun's surface. The project also involved researchers in the US and UK (References 58, 127-130).
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