A sign with a model of the Japanese H-IIB rocket welcomes visitors to Minamitane Town on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014. Minamitane Town is one of only a few small towns located outside of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tanegashima Space Center, where the launch of an H-IIA rocket carrying the Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory will take place in the next week. The NASA-Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency GPM spacecraft will collect information that unifies data from an international network of existing and future satellites to map global rainfall and snowfall every three hours.

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Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls