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eruption and expansion of the Sun's atmosphere. SOLAR-B has visible,
X-ray and EUV telescopes with highly leveraged international participa-
tion, and will greatly advance our understanding of the crucial first link in
the Sun-Earth connection.
For Sun-Earth system studies, Akebono (1989-; in collaboration with
Canada) and Geotail (1992-; a joint mission with NASA) are still in good
health. The primary objective of Akebono (cf. Refs. 4 and 5) is to study
auroral acceleration processes, using its highly elliptic polar orbit (75 incli-
nation, 275 km perigee, and 10,500 km initial apogee). Geotail (cf. Ref. 6)
was the first spacecraft to make detailed observations of the magnetotail,
the most important region of the Sun-Earth connection. Geotail was ini-
tially in an 8
210 R E equatorial orbit. Its apogee was then lowered to
30 R E in early 1995, so as to study substorm processes in the near-tail
region. Geotail continues to be a unique spacecraft in its present survey of
the equatorial magnetosphere.
As a new mission “Reimei” was launched in August 2005. It is a piggy-
back microsatellite, in a 610 km Sun-synchronous orbit near 1 LT. The sci-
entific objectives of Reimei are fast and fine-scale auroral structure studies.
It carries a suite of CCD cameras, electrostatic electron and ion analyz-
ers, and a Langmuir probe. Reimei will undertake extensive collaborative
studies with ground observatories and other polar satellites. Meanwhile,
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NiCT)
is planning another small satellite program, “SmartSat”. The SmartSat
weighs about 150 kg, and will be a collaborative program of government
agencies (NiCT & JAXA) and the private sector (Mitsubishi Heavy Indus-
tries). The space weather experiment of SmartSat consists of WCI (wide
field imager for CME tracking) and SEDA (advanced high-energy particle
sensor). These satellites are under development for launch around 2008.
And their payloads will be the principal components of the L5 mission for
space weather research and operational forecasting experiment proposed by
the NiCT. 7 The spacecraft will be located at the L5 point of the Sun-Earth
system for remote sensing of the Sun and the interplanetary space and for
in situ measurement of the solar wind and high-energy solar particle events.
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3.1.2. Initiation of the surveys of terrestrial objects: Moon, Venus,
and Mercury
Moon was the first target of Japanese missions orbiting around solar sys-
tem objects other than the Earth, by “Hiten” (1990). JAXA is preparing
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