Hinode, Camatai & SSSat 2

The SSSat 2 (Solarsail Subpayload Satellite, soraseiru sabupeiro-do) was an experimental 15-meter diameter solar sail, based on the experience of the earlier S-310-34 suborbital mission. The solar sail experiment was mounted on the third stage of the M-5 launch vehicle instead of ballast and was to deploy after the primary and piggyback satellites were jettisoned.

The Solar-B, also called Hinode, consists of a coordinated set of optical, X-ray, and EUV telescopes. The optical telescope is a diffraction-limited, aplanatic Gregorian with an aperture of 0.5 m. It provides an angular resolution of about 0.2 arcsec over the field of view of about 400 × 400 arcsec. The focal plane package of the optical telescope consists of a filter vector magnetograph and a spectro-polarimeter. This combination allows us to obtain, for the first time, a continuous series of high-precision vector magnetograms, Dopplergrams, and filtergrams with sub-arcsec resolution. The X-ray telescope images the high temperature (0.5 to 10 MK) corona with an improved angular resolution, say approximately 1 arcsec, a few times better than Yohkoh's soft X-ray telescope. The Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Imaging Spectrometer aims to determine velocity fields and other plasma parameters in the corona and transition region, thus helping to relate coronal dynamic behavior, observed with the X-ray telescope, to the underlying photospheric magnetic field, observed with the optical telescope. The EUV-imaging spectrometer is also expected to unveil the inflow and outflow of magnetic reconnection, and hence together with the two other telescopes, to finally solve long-standing controversies on coronal heating and dynamics.

HITSAT 1 (Hokkaido Institute of Technology Satellite 1) is a nanosatellite developed by students of the Hokkaido Institute of Technology. HITSAT 1 has a 12 cm cube structure and is powered by solar cells charging a LiIon battery. The purpose of this satellite is to test new technologies in space. HITSAT 1 was launched piggyback on an M-5 (2) launch vehicle on 22 September 2006. The satellite decayed on 18 August 2008 from orbit.