CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The maiden flight of Japan's H-2A rocket is officially scheduled for launch August 25 from the Tanegashima Space Center, the Japanese space agency NASDA has announced.

Launch of the upgraded H-2 rocket from the Japanese coast is set for between 12 a.m. and 5 a.m. EDT (0400 to 0900 GMT).

The H-2A will be carrying an instrumented test payload that will be used to confirm the launch vehicle's performance and the environment inside the nose cone that future satellites will experience, Makoto Kajii, director of the NASDA office in Washington, D.C., said Thursday.

Opportunities to launch from Tanegashima -- which, in part, are timed to not conflict with local fishing seasons -- extend through the end of September.

With a new first-stage main engine, strap-on solid rocket boosters and an improved second stage, this H-2A is a more powerful, and hopefully more reliable, launch vehicle than its H-2 predecessor, which was permanently grounded following back-to-back failures in February 1998 and November 1999.

Reaction to those failures, along with problems in testing new H-2A hardware and delays in the maiden launch, prompted European Space Agency (ESA) officials to alter their plans for launching the Artemis experimental communications satellite on the first H-2A launch vehicle.