ALE Co., Ltd (Minato-ku, Tokyo, Founder CEO Lena Okajima) is a Japan-based, private space company with a mission to promote science through entertainment. In this release, ALE is announcing a change in schedule for the world’s first artificial shooting star challenge project ‘SHOOTING STAR challenge’ to the Spring of 2020. This change has been made in order to further improve the technical specifications of the micro-satellite, which is currently under development.
The specific improvement is to incorporate thrusters into the satellite design. With the addition of thrusters, it will be possible to fine tune the trajectory of the micro-satellite through propulsion whilst also extending its mission life. We believe that the probability of success of the project will be greatly increased. Furthermore we view the merits in making these changes are significant from the viewpoint of scientific research and technological development.