A sign with a model of the Japanese H-IIB rocket welcomes visitors to Minamitane Town, one of only a few small towns located outside of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Tanegashima Space Center (TNSC), where the launch of an H-IIA rocket carrying the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory will take place in the next week, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014, Tanegashima Island, Japan. The NASA-Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) GPM spacecraft will collect information that unifies data from an international network of existing and future satellites to map global rainfall and snowfall every three hours. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Photographer NASA/Bill Ingalls
Date February 22, 2014