H-IIA

Vehicle description and variants

The H-IIA had two-stage core powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and various configurations of boosters to provide additional thrust based on mission requirements.

The base and final active configuration, H2A 202, used two SRB-A type solid rocket boosters. Launch performance could be enhanced by adding up to two additional SRB-As for a total of four boosters, or by adding up to four Castor 4AXL solid strap-on boosters (SSBs), for a total of six boosters.

H-IIA configurations were designated by a three- or four-digit code following the prefix "H2A":

• The first digit indicates the number of core stages (always 2).
• The second digit indicates the number of liquid rocket boosters, which were planned but never developed (always 0).
• The third digit indicates the number of SRB-A solid rocket boosters (2 or 4).
• The optional fourth digit indicates the number of Castor 4AXL strap-on boosters (2 or 4).

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Launch history

Main article: List of H-II and H3 launches

The first H-IIA was successfully launched on 29 August 2001, followed by a string of successes.

The sixth launch on 29 November 2003, intended to launch two IGS reconnaissance satellites, failed. JAXA announced that launches would resume in 2005, and the first successful flight took place on 26 February 2005 with the launch of MTSAT-1R.

The first launch for a mission beyond Earth orbit was on 14 September 2007 for the SELENE Moon mission. The first foreign payload on the H-IIA was the Australian FedSat-1 in 2002. As of March 2015, 27 out of 28 launches were successful.

A rocket with increased launch capabilities, H-IIB, is a derivative of the H-IIA family. H-IIB uses two LE-7A engines in its first stage, as opposed to one in H-IIA. The first H-IIB was successfully launched on 10 September 2009.

For the 29th flight on 24 November 2015, an H-IIA with an upgraded second stage launched the Telstar 12V satellite, the first commercial primary payload for a Japanese launch vehicle.

References

Notes

Sources

References

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