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Five programs, i.e. ASTER, GOSAT, GCOM-W1, GPM and ALOS-2 are going on in Japanese Earth Observation
programs. ASTER has lost its short wave infrared channels. AMSR-E stopped its operation, but it started its operation
from Sep. 2012 with slow rotation speed. It finally stopped on December 2015. GCOM-W1 was launched on 18, May,
2012 and is operating well as well as GOSAT. ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite) was successfully launched
on 24th Jan. 2006. ALOS carries three instruments, i.e., PRISM (Panchromatic Remote Sensing Instrument for Stereo
Mapping), AVNIR-2 (Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer), and PALSAR (Phased Array L band Synthetic
Aperture Radar). Unfortunately, ALOS has stopped its operation on 22nd, April, 2011 by power loss. GOSAT
(Greenhouse Gas Observation Satellite) was successfully launched on 29, January, 2009. GOSAT carries 2 instruments,
i.e. a green house gas sensor (TANSO-FTS) and a cloud/aerosol imager (TANSO-CAI). The main sensor is a Fourier
transform spectrometer (FTS) and covers 0.76 to 15 μm region with 0.2 to 0.5 cm-1 resolution. SMILES (Superconducting
Millimeter wave Emission Spectrometer) was launched on September 2009 to ISS and started the
observation, but stopped its operation on April 2010. GPM (Global Precipitation Mission) core satellite was launched on
Feb. 2014. GPM is a joint project with NASA and carries two instruments. JAXA has developed DPR (Dual frequency
Precipitation Radar) which is a follow on of PR on TRMM. ALOS F/O satellites are divided into two satellites, i.e. SAR
and optical satellites. The first one of ALOS F/O is called ALOS 2 and carries L-band SAR. It was launched on May
2014. JAXA is planning to launch follow on of optical sensors. It is now called Advanced Optical Satellite and the
planned launch date is fiscal 2019. Other future satellites are GCOM-C1 (ADEOS-2 follow on), GOSAT-2 and
EarthCare. GCOM-C1 will be launched on 2017 and GOSAT-2 will be launched on fiscal 2018. Another project is
EarthCare. It is a joint project with ESA and JAXA is going to provide CPR (Cloud Profiling Radar). EarthCare will be
launched on 2019.
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