Uchinoura ni Imasu

This morning I and Ozawa-san, a postdoc at Osaka U., flew down to Kagoshima prefecture to go to the Uchinoura Space Center. The airport experience was very efficient and pleasant (although the plane ticket was about twice what you would pay in the US for a 1 hour flight). The view from the plane was great, as we flew from the main island of Honshu to the southern island of Kyushu. Kagoshima is the southernmost prefecture, and it's very mountainous; the airport itself is on the top of a mountain, and flying in was very cool.

We then took a bus and taxi for 2 1/2 hours to get to USC, through rural areas and small towns and amazing scenery, over roads that seemed at times like a version of Route 6 in Pennsylvania if it were transplanted to Hawaii. The mountains and trees were straight out of an Akira Kurosawa movie, which I guess makes sense. The space center itself consists of a tracking station and launch pad perched on the side of a mountain, overlooking the Pacific. If you watched the launch movie, then you've seen it. I'll try to take some photos of the center and the ride back up to Kagoshima airport.

It turns out the internet connection is fine and there is a lot of down time here. My duties involve getting target and satellite maneuver lists from the scheduling center in Tokyo and running programs to create command files to upload. Fun fun.