TOKYO, (MILLAT/APP/AFP) – Japan launched a new
spy satellite on Friday, the country’s space agency said, as the region grows increasingly uneasy over North Korea’s quickening missile programme.
The Radar 5 unit was carried into space on Japan’s
mainstay H-2A rocket from a launch site in the
country’s southwest.
It is meant to replace an existing satellite that is coming
to the end of its mission.
Japan started putting spy satellites into orbit in 2003
after North Korea fired a mid-range ballistic missile over
the Japanese mainland and into the western Pacific in 1998.
The threat has steadily accelerated and just last
week Pyongyang fired four ballistic missiles, with
three landing provocatively close to Japan.
Tokyo currently maintains three optical satellites
for daytime surveillance and three radar satellites
for nighttime monitoring. Two of those are backups.
The new satellite will succeed one of the three radar
satellites that was launched in 2011.
The satellites are officially for “information-gathering”
— a euphemism for spying — but are also used to monitor damage in
the wake of natural disasters.