Launch of the Akatsuki spacecraft and the world’s first solar sail powered spacecraft IKAROS from the Tanegashima Space Center, Japan occurred as scheduled yesterday. The mission had been delayed by low cloud cover on Tuesday morning and yesterday was the second (successful) attempt.
Liftoff occurred this time with no cloud visible in the webcast of the event.
At various stages in the webcast, bits of the rocket dropped off as planned. In the case of the image below, I think the white object I watched fall away was one of the solid rocket boosters.
I always find it amazing that I can sit in front of a computer and watch a spacecraft separate from its launch rocket and head off to another planet (see below).
