The venture "will have an articulate concept and we will make it work as full-fledged business," said Shin Satori, an associate professor at the Sapporo-based university who leads the group.

The venture, which has received a positive response from agricultural cooperatives, plans to launch the satellite by fiscal 2008, the group said.

The venture, named "Hokkaido Satellite," has already finished drawing up a conceptual design of its first satellite, dubbed "Taiki" after the name of the Hokkaido town where the venture will be based. The cube-shaped satellite will weigh about 50 kilograms.

It will be equipped with a hyperspectral camera with extremely high resolution developed jointly by the university, Fujitsu and ATF, a computer peripheral device firm based in Ebetsu, Hokkaido.

The camera will have a 60-kilometer-square scope and will record images of the ground for seven minutes every day from an altitude of 567 kilometers above Japan.

By analyzing recordings capturing waves of light reflected by irrigated rice, the company will figure out the protein content in areas 4 meters square.

Using the data, farmers will be able to produce value-added products of even quality as they will be able to determine the conditions of rice in small sections and the harvest timing, according to the group.

The company will initially spend about 500 million yen for the project, including the cost of launching the satellite on a Russian rocket.

The company aims to receive about 5 million yen annually per customer and sign a contract with 20 groups across Japan, it said.

In Japan, an increasing number of private entities are aiming to enter in the space business.

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