A Japanese rocket lifted off Tuesday and successfully put the national space programme's first commercial satellite into orbit, officials said, as Tokyo tries to enter a business dominated by European and Russian companies.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries oversaw the launch from Tanegashima Space Center in southwest Japan.

The launch of the H-IIA rocket was originally scheduled at 3:23 pm (0623 GMT), but was delayed by roughly 30 minutes because a small ship unexpectedly came near the space station.

The rocket successfully launched at 3:50 pm, carrying the TELSTAR 12V communications and broadcasting satellite for Canadian satellite operator Telesat.

About four and a half hours later, it released the payload as planned, said an official of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

"The release was successful and the satellite is on course to the scheduled orbit," the official told AFP.

The satellite later successfully entered an oval orbit, Kyodo News reported.

Japan wants to become a major player in the satellite launching business. It has tried to improve the H-IIA rocket to cut the cost of each launch to make its programme competitive.

earlier report
Ottawa, Canada, September 9, 2013 - Telesat, a leading global satellite operator, has procured a powerful, multi-mission satellite from Astrium that will replace Telesat's Telstar 12 satellite at 15 degrees West while significantly expanding coverage of growing markets in South America, the Atlantic and EMEA region.

The new state-of-the-art satellite, called Telstar 12 VANTAGE, will utilize a combination of broad regional beams and more focused high throughput spot beams to increase capacity and offer superior performance for broadband networks on the ground, in the air and at sea. By using Ku-band across all coverage beams, Telstar 12 VANTAGE will be fully backwards compatible with existing Ku-band terminal equipment.

Telesat engineers set out to design a next generation Telstar satellite with improved coverage and flexibility to meet the growing communications needs of broadcast, corporate, government and enterprise users, including demand for aero and maritime services. The result is Telstar 12 VANTAGE, a completely new Telesat satellite that will deliver the capacity needed to support the types of bandwidth intensive applications increasingly being used across the industry.

From its central orbital location of 15 degrees West, Telstar 12 VANTAGE will provide coverage of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In addition to optimizing coverage of the regions now served by Telstar 12, Telstar 12 VANTAGE provides new, high capacity coverage of Brazil and East Africa and builds on Telesat's leading position in mobility and energy services with new coverage of the Caribbean, Mediterranean, South Atlantic and North Sea.

"Telstar 12 at 15 degrees West has long been valued by the satellite user community for its continental coverage and ability to seamlessly connect the Americas to Europe and the Middle East," said Dan Goldberg, Telesat's President and CEO.

"Now with Telstar 12 VANTAGE, our customers will have access to a combination of broad regional coverage and high throughput beams to support the increased use of more bandwidth intensive applications. Telstar 12 VANTAGE continues Telesat's long tradition of outstanding innovation and provides our customers with the competitive advantage they require to compete successfully in the markets they serve."

Telstar 12 VANTAGE will have a 15 year design life and provide up to 52 Ku-band 36 MHz transponder equivalents.