TSX:7011 News 5 September 2025 - 5 January 2026

Key Facts Historical Development of Japan’s Space Program Japan’s journey in space began in the 1950s and has grown from university research rockets to a major national endeavor. In 1955, Professor Hideo Itokawa’s team launched the first pencil rocket as a rudimentary experiment en.wikipedia.org. By the 1960s, Japan developed larger sounding rockets (the Kappa and Lambda series) leading up to its first satellite launch. In February 1970, Japan successfully launched the Ohsumi satellite on a Lambda-4S rocket, making Japan the world’s fourth spacefaring nation to launch an indigenous satellite into orbit (after the USSR, USA, and France) u-tokyo.ac.jp. Throughout the