The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on Monday postponed until Tuesday the first launch in a year of its key H-2A rocket, which will carry a satellite to monitor disasters, due to a technical error.
JAXA said it found that the ground monitoring system had an erroneous setting Monday to gauge the temperature inside the rocket's satellite fairing.
"Everything was functioning properly. But the ground monitoring system sent an alarm indicating that the temperature inside the fairing was too high, when it was actually normal," an agency spokesman said.
"We do not know what caused the alarm. But we think we can go ahead with the launch tomorrow (Tuesday) because we can manually monitor the temperature inside the fairing," he said.
The launch is now scheduled for 10:33 am (0133 GMT) Tuesday.
The rocket will carry an Advanced Land Observing Satellite, which is used to draft maps, monitor disaster damage and investigate natural resources.
It was the third postponing of the rocket launch, which was originally scheduled for last September.
Japan in February 2005 successfully launched a rocket with a satellite to predict weather. That was Japan's first launch since a rocket carrying a spy satellite to monitor North Korea failed in November 2003.
In July, Japan also launched a satellite on a mid-size M-5 rocket to probe high-energy astronomical phenomena such as black holes.
