40,000 km away from OICETS. The experiment was successful on 9 December, when the link could be established. In March 2006, JAXA could establish with OICETS the worldwide first optical links between a LEO satellite and a ground station first in Japan and in June 2006 with a mobile station in Germany. INDEX (Reimei) is a small 70 kg satellite for testing various equipment, and functions as an aurora observation mission as well. The Reimei satellite is currently in its extended mission phase. Earth observation program Japan's first Earth observation satellites were MOS-1a and MOS-1b launched in 1987 and 1990. During the 1990s, and the new millennium this program came under heavy fire, because both Adeos (Midori) and Adeos 2 (Midori 2) satellites failed after just ten months in orbit. Active Missions: GOSAT, GCOM-W, ALOS-2, GCOM-C, GOSAT-2 Under Development: ALOS-3 Retired: ALOS ALOS In January 2006, JAXA successfully launched the Advanced Land Observation Satellite (ALOS/Daichi). Communication between ALOS and the ground station in Japan will be done through the Kodama Data Relay Satellite, which was launched during 2002. This project is under intense pressure due to the shorter than expected lifetime of the ADEOS II (Midori) Earth Observation Mission. For missions following Daichi, JAXA opted to separate it into a radar satellite (ALOS-2) and an optical satellite (ALOS-3). ALOS 2 SAR was launched in May 2014. Rainfall observation Since Japan is an island nation and gets struck by typhoons every year, research about the dynamics of the atmosphere is a very important issue. For this reason Japan launched in 1997 the TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) satellite in cooperation with NASA, to observe the tropical rainfall seasons. For further research NASDA had launched the ADEOS and ADEOS II missions in 1996 and 2003. However, due to various reasons, both satellites had a much shorter than expected life term. On 28 February 2014, a H-2A rocket launched the GPM Core Observatory, a satellite jointly developed by JAXA and NASA. The GPM mission is the successor to the TRMM mission, which by the time of the GPM launch had been noted as highly successful. JAXA provided the Global Precipitation Measurement/Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (GPM/DPR) Instrument for this mission. Global Precipitation Measurement itself is a satellite constellation, whilst the GPM Core Observatory provides a new calibration standard for other satellites in the constellation. Other countries/agencies like France, India, ESA, etc. provides the sub-satellites. The