ALOS-3

ALOS-3, also called Daichi 3 and short for Advanced Land Observing Satellite-3, was a Japanese optical Earth observation satellite built by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). It was designed as the successor to the optical imaging half of the original ALOS mission, with a wide-swath, high-resolution imager giving about 0.8 m ground resolution in panchromatic mode and 3.2 m in six-band colour mode, across a 70 km swath at nadir. Its planned uses were cartography, regional observation, disaster monitoring and resource surveying, with any point in Japan observable within 24 hours of a request. The satellite had a planned lifetime of seven years and a mass of about 3000 kg for a sun-synchronous orbit near 669 km. It was lost on its launch in March 2023, the maiden flight of the H-3-22S rocket from Tanegashima, when the second stage engine failed to ignite and the vehicle did not reach orbit.