– Another failure for the Japanese H3 space launcher
This is the second failure for the new Japanese space launcher.
Japan’s next-generation H3 rocket was ordered to self-destruct shortly following liftoff on Tuesday due to a failure of as yet unknown origin that made it impossible to complete its mission, Japanese space agency Jaxa said.
This is a second bitter failure in a row for this new space launcher in which Japan places a lot of hope. In mid-February, this model failed to take off due to a problem with its boosters, which forced the Jaxa to postpone its maiden flight. This time, the rocket managed to take off as planned at 10:37 a.m. Japanese time (01:37 GMT) from the Tanegashima space center (southwest of Japan).
But the mission was aborted regarding ten minutes later, when the speed of the machine seemed to decrease abnormally. The command center first indicated that the ignition of the engines of the second stage of the rocket was “not confirmed”, before announcing a self-destruct order because there was no more “possibility to succeed in the mission”.
The imposing H3 model, successor to the H2-A rockets, is supposed to allow Japan in the future to ensure more frequent, safer and less expensive commercial space launches to be able to compete in particular with the Falcon 9 launcher of the American company SpaceX to ferry satellites. The Jaxa was known for its high flight reliability, but it has had a series of failures since last year.
Last October, another of its smaller launchers, Epsilon, also received a self-destruct order shortly following takeoff due to a trajectory problem. It was the first failure for a Jaxa rocket since 2003.
AFP
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