Status: Active. First Launch: 2006-12-16. Last Launch: 2017-08-19. Number: 4 .
3 stage vehicle consisting of 4 x H-II SRB-A + 1 x H-IIA Stage 1 + 1 x H-IIA Stage 2.
Engineering Test Satellite-8 was a Japanese prototype/operational demonstration for a number of new technologies: a large satellite bus, large-scale deployable 40-m-span antennae, mobile satellite communications system, mobile satellite digital multimedia broadcasting, and basic positioning using high-accuracy time standard devices. It will be positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 146 degrees East. JAXA developed two portable terrestrial systems to communicate directly with the satellite - a tiny telephone and a portable laptop computer. The satellite was to have a lifetime of ten years. As of 2007 Mar 11 located at 145.97E drifting at 0.010W degrees per day.
Telesat of Canada's Telstar 12 Vantage comms satellite launched to geotransfer orbit in the first commercial launch of Japan's H-IIA rocket and the first use of an uprated LOX/LH2 upper stage modified for a long coast to a third burn at geotransfer apogee. The stage venting was visible to observers in the USA. Telstar 12 Vantage replaces Telstar 12 and provides Ku-band capacity to the Americas.
See DSN 2 (Kirameki 2). Satellite for the DSN Corporation, a Sky Perfect JSAT / NEC / NTT /Maeda consortium, to provide an X-band military communications satellite for the Japanese Defense Ministry. DSN 2 (Kirameki 2) was their first satellite, based on the Mitsubishi Electric DS-2000 bus.