Epsilon S | SOLAR-C
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is targeting November 2028 for Epsilon S carrying SOLAR-C from Mu Center, Uchinoura Space Center, Japan. Launch Library files only the month, so the date is a placeholder. The date is still provisional and can move.
COUNTDOWN
FLIGHT PLAN
There's no launch window filed yet. Current date is a placeholder or rough estimation based on unreliable or interpreted sources.
FIELD KIT / OPTICS
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MISSION BRIEF
SOLAR-C is a Japan-led international mission with the cooperation by the US and European countries. It aims to gain new insights into the fundamental physical mechanisms driving solar plasma dynamics by performing three simultaneous UV observations. The first consists to observe the broad range of temperatures, spanning over three orders of magnitude from the 10,000 Kelvin chromosphere to the million Kelvin corona, and even to the 15 million Kelvin solar flares. The second consists to resolve the elemental structures at high spatial (0.4 arcsec) and temporal (1 sec) resolution and trace their evolutions by increasing the ability to collect the solar UV rays 10 to 30 times as much as before. The third consists to conduct a high dispersion spectroscopy (equivalent to a velocity resolution of 2 km/s) to obtain spectroscopic information that enables quantitative diagnostics (such as velocity, temperature, density, ionization degree, and abundance). By combining the three observations, SOLAR-C can analyze the dynamically evolving solar atmospheres over a wide altitude range from the chromosphere to the corona while resolving elemental structures.
SOURCE: LAUNCH LIBRARY 2 // THE SPACE DEVS
LAUNCH CORRIDOR
- Due east
- The lowest inclination a direct launch from here can reach is 31.3°. That’s this pad’s own latitude. Flying east also gets the most free speed from Earth’s rotation.
- Due south
- The polar corridor, at 90° inclination, passes over both poles. It gets no help from Earth’s spin, so the same rocket can carry less.
Drag the globe to turn it. The shading is the real terminator, and it moves.
A globe of the Earth centred on Mu Center at latitude 31.25 degrees north, longitude 131.08 degrees east. Two curved lines leave the pad. The solid gold line runs due east and marks the lowest orbital inclination a direct launch from this site can reach, 31.3 degrees, equal to the pad’s latitude of 31.3 degrees. The dashed cyan line runs due south and marks the polar corridor at 90 degrees inclination. The darkened part of the globe is the night side. The surface wind is from 20° at 7 km/h. That's the cyan arrow at the pad.
LAUNCH SITE
Mu Center
Uchinoura Space Center, Japan
OBSERVED 2026-11-11 11:30:00Z // OPEN-METEO (CC BY 4.0) // GENERAL CONDITIONS, NOT LAUNCH CRITERIA
Minimum direct inclination 31°. This pad is 31° north of the equator, so a direct launch can't reach an orbit inclined less than 31°. An orbit of inclination i never passes over latitudes beyond ±i. Getting to an equatorial orbit, which geostationary satellites need, takes a 31° plane change at some point in the flight. Inclinations of 31° and up are reachable straight off the pad. The ground here moves east at about 398 m/s with Earth's spin. That's 465 m/s at the equator, falling with the cosine of latitude. A launch due east keeps that head start.
DATUM WGS-84 // EQUIRECTANGULAR PROJECTION // ORBIT FIGURES DERIVED FROM THE PUBLISHED LATITUDE
Open this pad in a mapPAD CONDITIONS
SURFACE WIND @ 10 M
7km/h
Blowing from the north-north-east, bearing 20 degrees
GUSTING
17km/h
Clear sky
SOURCE: OPEN-METEO CC BY 4.0
The observed figures are general weather at the coordinates of Mu Center. They aren’t the launch rules. The operator and the range write those for each mission, and they cover things this forecast doesn’t carry, like electric fields, cloud layers higher up and winds along the rocket’s path. Only the operator publishes them. Wind often stops a countdown, but no number here is a limit for this flight. Nothing here is a go or no-go call. No operator figure was published for this attempt.