Japan's H-2A Rocket to Launch UAE's Mars Probe

If you don't know, you should check it up. Japan is quite high in batting average, rather launching average of space rockets. So impressive that the UAE wants Japan to launch its Mars probe in 2020 - the year of the Tokyo Olympics, too.

With the 50th year anniversary of the founding of the nation, the UAE plans to send a probe to Mars in 2021. A negotiation was ongoing between Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and MBRSC and an agreement worth several billion yen was reached on March 22, it was reported in Abu Dhabi.

Japan will launch an H2A at the Tanegashima Space Center in 2020.

The UAE's is to be the first national project in the Middle East to launch a Mars probe and this gives momentum to Japan's challenge in the raging race in rocket launching business with Europe's Arianespace and US Space X.

Mitsubishi's managing executive officer Hisakazu Mizutani comments:

"We believe our past successful launches and near top-level 'launching percentage' (96.7%) helped winning trust."

The UAE is anxious to have the probe land on Mars on time and it was on that account that Japan was preferred to the US Space X.

An agreement was inked in Abu Dhabi between the UAE's Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to expand beyond the launching of a Mars probe to train personnel through Japan' experiment module (JEM).

H2A is an active expendable launch system operated by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It was first launched in 2001. The first foreign payload was Australian FedSat-1 in 2002.

As of March 2015, 27 of 28 launches were successful for an impressive percentage of 96.7%. What a batting average!