Japan’s final HTV cargo spacecraft leaves space station for fiery end
Japan’s “white stork” has taken flight from the International Space Station for the last time. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) ninth H-II Transfer Vehicle, or HTV-9, was released from its temporary perch at the end of the space station’s robotic arm on Tuesday (Aug. 18) at 1:36 p.m. EDT (1736 GMT). The uncrewed cargo vehicle, which JAXA nicknamed the “Kounotori,” or “white stork,” will spend two more days in orbit before flight controllers in Tsukuba, Japan, command an engine burn that it will send the spacecraft plunging back into Earth’s atmosphere. Loaded with about 7,400 lbs. (3,400 kilograms) of used equipment and trash from the space station, the HTV will meet its fiery end, succumbing to the heat of re-entry and burning up over the Pacific Ocean.
The de-orbit will mark the end of 11 years of HTV missions. First launched on Sept. 10, 2009, atop Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ first H-IIB rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, the barrel-shaped HTV was Japan’s first spacecraft to service a space station and the first uncrewed vehicle to be berthed on the U.S. segment of the International Space Station (ISS). The 33-foot (10-meter) long and 14-foot (4.4-meter) wide, solar-powered spacecraft was also the first capsule to carry both pressurized and unpressurized cargo. “Over the past 11 years, the H-II Transfer Vehicle Kounotori has delivered over 40 tons of cargo, research, hardware and equipment to the International Space Station,” Joel Montalbano, NASA’s ISS program manager, said in a statement during NASA TV’s broadcast of the departure. “I want to congratulate Japan on the HTV missions.”