MOMIJI, carrying a payload built in Bhutan, is handed over to JAXA

On 26 August 2026, at JAXA's Tsukuba Space Center, a small satellite named MOMIJI passed its hand-over review and was placed inside the deployer that will release it from the International Space Station.

MOMIJI is the fifth satellite in the GARDENS series built by students at Chiba Institute of Technology, and the first to carry a payload built in Bhutan.

The collaboration began in September 2024, when Chiba Tech and Bhutan's Government Technology Agency (GovTech) signed a memorandum of understanding for a joint satellite mission: Bhutanese students would design and assemble the payload, and Chiba Tech students would build the satellite bus it flies on.

In January 2025, Yusaku Washio, student lead on the Chiba Tech satellite team, travelled to Bhutan for the Mission Definition Review, the stage where a mission's objectives and technical requirements are settled. Over the months that followed, a student team at the College of Science and Technology designed, built and tested the payload.

In July 2025 the students carried their payload to Chiba, where it was integrated with the satellite bus their Japanese counterparts had built, and the two halves became one spacecraft.

Chiba Tech's students name their satellites after plants: KASHIWA, SAKURA, YOMOGI, BOTAN. MOMIJI, the autumn maple, is the fifth.

From Tsukuba, MOMIJI travels on to launch. Once aboard the International Space Station it will be released into orbit from the Kibo module, through the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer.

Congratulations to everyone who built it, at CST and at Chiba Institute of Technology.

For more information, here is the post on LinkedIn ↗.