TSX:7011 29 June 2025 - 5 January 2026

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 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 u-tokyo.ac.jp. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Japan built out its launch sites at Tanegashima and Uchinoura, and developed new rockets often with technology licensed or adapted from the U.S. nasaspaceflight.com.