Following arrival at Japan’s Kitakyushu Airport at 10:30 p.m. EST Saturday, Nov. 23, the GPM Core Observatory spacecraft in its shipping container was off-loaded from the C-5 aircraft and moved to a barge to be transported to Tanegashima Island.

GPM's shipping container is unloaded from the U.S. Air Force C-5 cargo plane that carried it to Japan. Image Credit: NASA

The barge departed Kitakyushu around 6:30 a.m. EST Sunday, Nov. 24, but a third of the way to the island, an unplanned stop had to be made at a port called Saiki to protect the ship from weather and rough seas. The barge arrived at Shimama port on the southwest portion of Tanegashima Island on Tuesday, Nov. 26.

Recent improvements to the Kitakyushu airport in Japan facilitated the transportation of the GPM satellite. A freshly paved concrete staging area supported a massive crane as it lifted the satellite into the cargo hold of an ocean barge. Image Credit: NASA Goddard / Michael Starobin

The GPM/JAXA team moved the shipping container onto a flatbed truck. At 10 a.m. EST Tuesday, Nov. 26, (midnight local time) the truck began a five-mile journey moving GPM across the island to the Tanegashima Space Center.
Following arrival at the space center, the spacecraft was moved into a clean room facility. Inspection work on the spacecraft and its solar arrays is currently in progress. Another GPM team is due to arrive in December to begin the Comprehensive Performance Testing.