Japan launches spy satellite

Tokyo: Japan launched a new spy satellite on Friday as the region grows increasingly uneasy over North Korea’s quickening missile programme. The Radar 5 unit was carried into space on Japan’s mainstay H-2A rocket from a launch site in the country’s south- west. It is meant to replace an existing satellite that is coming to the end of its mission. Japan started putting spy satellites into orbit in 2003 after North Korea fired a mid-range ballistic missile over the Japanese mainland and into the western Pacific in 1998.  The threat has steadily accelerated and just last week Pyongyang fired four ballistic missiles, with three landing provocatively close to Japan.              AFP