Japan launches high-speed Internet communications satellite

Tokyo: Japan successfully launched an experimental communications satellite into Space, designed to provide high-speed Internet access across Asia, even when terrestrial infrastructure goes down, according to officials of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The domestically developed H-2A rocket carrying the Kizuna satellite was launched without any glitches from the Space Centre on Tanegashima island off the southern tip of Kyushu Island, southern Japan.

The communications satellite is expected to have a life cycle of five years, according to JAXA officials.

The $342 million Kizuna will facilitate super-high speed data communications of up to 1.2 Gbps, which would make it the fastest in the world, the agency said.

That rate would translate to 150 times that of the average high-speed ADSL connection rate of 8 Mbps, or 12 times the speed of a fibre-optic communication delivery to a person's premises (FTTP).

The "Kizuna," which also means "bond" in Japanese, is expected to begin transmitting and receiving data with Earth-based facilities in July after completing on-orbit tests.

The ''Kizuna'' will allow communications to take place even when a ground-based network is affected in a disaster in any Asian country, and will transmit data to crisis management centres. The satellite will also be used as an educational and medical tool to reach people in remote or mountainous areas.

According to JAXA, the satellite will enable students in Asian countries to communicate with each other without any time lag, as if they were in the same classroom.

Japan's successfully launched its first lunar probe, Kaguya, last September, which released two baby satellites designed to study the gravity fields of the moon among other projects.

Kaguya is the most extensive lunar mission to investigate the moon since the US Apollo programme in the 1960s and '70s.