Japan has successfully managed to put the space freighter in orbit. The brand new unmanned space freighter weighing 16.5 tonnes blasted off from Tanegashima base in the south of the country at 02.01 local time on Friday.

The mission of the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) is to restore the space station, which is set to retire from its servicing abilities next year. The HTV mission is being coordinated by engineers from Japan as well as the team of engineers in NASA in Houston, U.S.

The freighter will conduct several test on the navigation and the systems that are supposed to sync with ISS, before making a contact with the International Space Station. Docking however is estimated to be on the eight day of the mission. Although it has the capacity, to carry 6 tonnes worth of equipment, the HTV-1 has a cargo of 4.5 tonnes. The HTV-1 is paving the way for future restoring robotic ships like it.

Masazumi Miyake, one of the Japanese space agency’s (Jaxa) senior officials in the US said, “This HTV-1 vehicle is a demonstration flight to verify its functionality and performance, after completion of this mission we are planning to launch one operational HTV per year on average”.

Contrary to the previous spacecrafts that visited the International Space Station, the HTV-1 will not dive completely into the orbiting platform. Instead, it will simply park under the bow of the International Space Station allowing the station’s robotic arm to hold it.
The ship will then be locked into a port facing Earth on the Harmony (Node 2) connecting module.

The mission will last for about six weeks while the HTV-1 will unload its supplies into the ISS.

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