28.04.2018

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced Friday that its SS520-5 has been recognized as the smallest orbital rocket by Guinness World Records.

The SS520-5, measuring 9.54 meters in height and 52 centimeters in diameter, is a three-stage solid rocket.

It was launched in February this year and successfully carried into orbit the 3-kilogram TRICOM-1 microsatellite, developed by the University of Tokyo.

In an earlier listing for JAXA, the agency’s Hayabusa unmanned probe mission to the asteroid Itokawa was recognized in 2011 by Guinness World Records as the first spacecraft to collect samples from an asteroid and return to Earth.

Quelle: The Japan Times