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NASA and JAXA team up to deliver amazing new satellite, promotional video

Preston Phro Oct 21, 2013
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Space is awesome. There’s no one who can disagree with that. It’s a simple fact of reality! Spaceflight, satellites, astronauts and all that jazz are just some of the coolest stuff on the planet…uhh…in the universe!

Helping to make all that coolness a reality are the amazing government agencies NASA (from United States) and JAXA (from Japan), who are devoted to the exploration of the great dark void that surrounds our planet. They’re also great partners, often working together to bring missions to fruition, like the GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement) mission, for which JAXA developed something called the DPR (Dual-frequency Percipitation Radar).

And while their program is awesome, there’s actually something even more sweet to come out of this partnership: A gorgeous anime promotional video!

Water, as you should have learned in school, is pretty darn important. It’s possibly the single most important molecule on earth and an increasingly endangered (and erratic) resource. Water is also a huge part of weather, and understanding precipitation even a tiny bit more will help us understand weather and climate better. Which, in turn, could possibly help us better predict storm frequency and intensity, possibly saving numerous lives.

▼ Any Kerbal Space Program players out there? “Jebadiah! Come baaaaaaaack!”

GPM, according to NASA, will “provide next-generation observations of rain and snow worldwide every three hours,” which will, hopefully, “unify precipitation measurements.” And, using information gathered from the satellite, NASA expects to be able to “advance our understanding of Earth’s water and energy cycles, [and] improve the forecasting of extreme events that cause natural disasters.” All of which sounds freaking awesome, if not a bit complicated.

JAXA’s role thus far has mainly been in developing and delivering the DPR, which will “provide 3-dimensional observations of rain and will provide an accurate estimation of rainfall rate to the scientific community.” Basically 3-D glasses for watching it rain is what it sounds like to us, but over the entire globe!

However, as exciting as all of this is, JAXA decided it needed to be more exciting! So they hired the young but well-respected anime studio WHITE FOX to produce a 6 minute promotional video for the mission. The story is a bit corny, but the video is gorgeous–especially for something sponsored by a government agency.

▼ All great relationships are born out of mutual hatred, right?

The video is about two young women–one from NASA and one from JAXA–who initially clash while working on the project but overcome their differences to get things done! It’s like a buddy cop movie, basically, but in spaaaaace! Okay, it’s not actually in space, but you get the point.

▼ Um, maybe mutual hatred and loooots of booze.

Still, the point of the video is to get people interested in learning about the DPR and GPM mission–and, believe me, it worked! I just spent an hour reading about rainfall, something I wouldn’t normally do if you paid me.

So, check out the video (with English subtitles) below, and then head over to project webpage on JAXA (Japanese only) or NASA (English only) to learn more!

Finally, here’s a photo of the actual GPM satellite. Looks like WHITE FOX was pretty much on the money!

That has to be one of the coolest things I’ve seen all month! We just hope this rubs off on NASA–we’d love to get an anime video about Curiosity.

References: NASA (1, 2), JAXA,
Images: NASA, JAXA

[ Read in Japanese ]