A high-speed downlink transmitter (HXTC/HMGA) developed as part of the Cabinet of Japan’s ImPACT Program (Shirasaka Program) with planning participation by Professor Seiko Shirasaka of the Graduate School of System Design and Management, and the MicroDragon, a micro-satellite weighing 50kg developed in collaboration with the Vietnam National Space Center, were launched onboard an Epsilon 4 rocket from the JAXA Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture on January 18 at 9:50.
The high-speed downlink transmitter (HXTC/XMGA) was developed in cooperation with the University of Tokyo and JAXA as part of the Shirasaka Program, and there are plans to conduct a transmission test sometime in or after February.
For the micro-satellite MicroDragon, a total of five universities, with Keio University joined by Hokkaido University, Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo, and Kyushu Institute of Technology, participated in education and development with the main aims of training early career researchers from the Vietnam National Space Center and the first bilateral development of a satellite weighing 50kg. This satellite has monitoring of the Vietnamese coastline by camera as its main mission. On January 18, it was confirmed that the transmitter and basic bus functions were operational and they succeeded in capturing the earth and first light using one of the triple-polarized cameras (developed by Hokkaido University) which were onboard on January 21.