AKARI, the first Japanese satellite dedicated to infrared astronomy, was launched on 2006 February 21, and started observations in May of the same year. AKARI has a 68.5 cm cooled telescope, together with two focal-plane instruments, which survey the sky in six wavelength bands from mid–to far-infrared. The instruments also have a capability for imaging and spectroscopy in the wavelength range 2-180$\mu$m in the pointed observation mode, occasionally inserted into a continuous survey operation. The in-orbit cryogen lifetime is expected to be one and a half years. The All-Sky Survey will cover more than 90% of the whole sky with a higher spatial resolution and a wider wavelength coverage than that of the previous IRAS all-sky survey. Point-source catalogues of the All-Sky Survey will be released to the astronomical community. Pointed observations will be used for deep surveys of selected sky areas and systematic observations of important astronomical targets. These will become an additional future heritage of this mission.

The Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) is one of two focal plane instruments on the AKARI satellite. FIS has four photometric bands at 65, 90, 140, and 160 µm, and uses two kinds of array detectors. The FIS arrays and optics are designed to sweep the sky with high spatial resolution and redundancy. The actual scan width is more than eight arcmin, and the pixel pitch is matches the diffraction limit of the telescope. Derived point spread functions (PSFs) from observations of asteroids are similar to the optical model. Significant excesses, however, are clearly seen around tails of the PSFs, whose contributions are about 30% of the total power. All FIS functions are operating well in orbit, and its performance meets the laboratory characterizations, except for the two longer wavelength bands, which are not performing as well as characterized. Furthermore, the FIS has a spectroscopic capability using a Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS). Because the FTS takes advantage of the optics and detectors of the photometer, it can simultaneously make a spectral map. This paper summarizes the in-flight technical and operational performance of the FIS.

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The Japanese satellite-borne infrared telescope, the Infrared Telescope in Space (IRTS), has completed a successful survey of a portion of the infrared sky. The IRTS consists of a 15 cm telescope cooled with superfluid liquid helium, and is installed on board the Space Flyer Unit (SFU) spacecraft. The SFU was launched on 1995 March 18 UT. The sky survey by the IRTS started on March 29 UT, and was completed on April 25 UT after exhausting its liquid helium. The cryogenic system operated as designed, and maintained the telescope and the focal-plane instruments at a stable temperature of 1.9 K for 38 days. The four focal-plane instruments, which together covered almost the entire infrared wavelength range, observed a sky area of about 2700 deg2 and returned a wealth of new data on a variety of objects, including the zodiacal light, interstellar gas and dust, near-infrared cosmic background light and point sources.

• ) of the Galactic plane are systematically larger than those on the northern side (b > 0 • ). We infer from this difference that there is a displacement of the Sun with respect to the center of interstellar medium from which the [C ii] line comes. When an exponential distribution is assumed for the [C ii] emitting gas, it is expected that the Sun is located at the distance of about 17% of the scale height above the center of the gas. This is consistent with the previously reported displacement of the Sun from the Galactic plane.