H-IIA

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The H-IIA is a family of liquid-fuelled rockets providing an expendable launch system for the purpose of launching satellites into geostationary orbit. It is manufactured by Mitsubishi and ATK Thiokol for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA. Launches occur at the Tanegashima Space Center.

The H-IIA is a derivative of the earlier H-II rocket, though has been substantially redesigned to improve reliability and minimize costs, after the H-II proved to be expensive and failure-prone. There are four different variants of the H-IIA for various purposes.

The H-IIA was first launched on August 29, 2001, and the sixth launch on November 29, 2003 failed. The rocket was intended to launch two reconnaissance satellites to observe North Korea. JAXA announced that launches would resume in 2005, and indeed the first successful flight took place on February 26 with the launch of MTSAT-1R.

Japan's eighth H-IIA launch was successful as well when the Advanced Land Observation Satellite (ALOS) was lofted into orbit to carry out a remote sensing mission in January 2006.

1 Basic specs
2 Variants
3 H-IIA flights
4 References
5 External links

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Basic specs

Length: 53 m
Stages: 2

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Variants

<tr><th>Designation<th>Mass (tonnes)<th>Payload (tonnes to GTO)<th>Addon modules <tr><td>H2a202<td>285<td>4<td>2 Solid rocket boosters (SRBs) <tr><td>H2a2022<td>316<td>4.25<td>2 SRBs + 2 Solid Strap-on Boosters (SSBs) <tr><td>H2a2024<td>347<td>4.5<td>2 SRBs + 4 SSBs <tr><td>H2a204<td><td>6<td>4 SRBS <tr><td>H2a212 (cancelled)<td>403<td>7.5<td>2 SRBs + 1 Liquid Strap-On Booster (LRB) <tr><td>H2a222 (cancelled)<td>520<td>9.5<td>2 SRBs + 2 LRBs </table> JAXA now foresees to increase the diameter of the main cryogenic tank of the launcher in order to augment its performance. The resulting launcher, the H-IIB, will fly in 2008.

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H-IIA flights

Date (UTC)	Flight	Model	Payload	Result
29.08.2001 07:00:00	TF1	H2a202	VEP 2	Success
			LRE
04.02.2002 02:45:00	TF2	H2a2024	VEP 3	Success
			MDS 1 (Tsubasa)
			DASH
10.09.2002 08:20:00	3F	H2a2024	USERS	Success
			DRTS (Kodama)
14.12.2002 01:31:00	4F	H2a202	ADEOS 2	Success
			WEOS
			FedSat 1
			Micro-Lab-Sat 1
28.03.2003 01:27:00	5F	H2a2024	IGS-Optical 1	Success
			IGS-Radar 1
29.11.2003 04:33:00	6F	H2a2024	IGS-Optical 2	Failure
			IGS-Radar 2
26.02.2005 09:25:00	7F	H2a2022	MTSat-1R	Success
24.01.2006 01:33:00	8F	H2a2022	ALOS	Success
18.02.2006 06:27:00	9F	H2a2024	MTSat-2	Success

Next flight, 10F is scheduled for no earlier than July 2006 with a pair of reconnaissance satellites. Maiden flight of the 204 version is around end of 2006 with the ETS-VIII.

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