Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Space Systems Division is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, and is active in space systems since the 1960s. The division holds an integrated end-to-end development capability covering design, assembly, and testing of satellites, and serves as spacecraft manufacturer and system integrator for Japanese national Earth observation and science programmes, with JAXA as its primary customer.^[1]

Key Earth observation programmes built by Mitsubishi Electric include the ALOS series: ALOS-2 (launched May 2014, carrying the PALSAR-2 L-band SAR instrument with improved resolution over its predecessor), ALOS-3 (March 2023 launch failure), and ALOS-4 (launched July 2024, carrying PALSAR-3 L-band SAR with a swath of more than 200 km and four times the coverage rate of ALOS-2).^[2] In greenhouse gas observation, the company built GOSAT (launched January 2009, the world's first dedicated greenhouse gas observation satellite, carrying TANSO-FTS and TANSO-CAI instruments) and GOSAT-2 (October 2018, with improved GHG column measurement precision), with GOSAT-GW as the planned next-generation follow-on integrating the AMSR3 instrument.^[3] Mitsubishi Electric also built the Himawari-8 (2014) and Himawari-9 (2016) geostationary meteorological satellites for the Japan Meteorological Agency, as well as ADEOS-II (December 2002), a multi-sensor climate platform.

For JAXA's GCOM-W satellite launched in 2012, Mitsubishi Electric built the AMSR2 instrument, a wide-angle conical-scanning passive microwave radiometer operating from 6.9 to 89 GHz with a 1,450 km swath, capable of observing the entire Earth in two days and measuring sea surface temperature, soil moisture, sea surface wind speed, sea ice concentration, and precipitation.^[4]