2024-02-17 03:07:00
After two first failures last year, the new Japanese H3 rocket successfully took off on Saturday, an important success for Japan which relies heavily on this heavy launcher to remain autonomous and competitive in the space sector.
This success comes following that of SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon), a small Jaxa machine which managed to land precisely on the Moon last month, a historic feat for Japan.
An imposing launcher 63 m high and 574 tonnes excluding payload, the H3 is supposed to allow Japan to ensure more frequent space flights (around six times a year), but also less expensive, to compete with foreign launchers like the Falcon 9 from the private American company SpaceX.
Global demand for low-cost space launches is booming, and competition is intensifying in this niche.
Jaxa’s reputation for high flight reliability had been damaged by the setbacks of its H3 program to date.
In February 2023, this machine co-developed with the Japanese group Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) was unable to take off due to a problem with the ignition of its boosters.
Then, during a second attempt last March, the rocket initially successfully took off, before deviating from its trajectory due to a failure of the second stage engines. The Jaxa had been forced to destroy it in mid-flight.
These failures had the effect of postponing several Jaxa space missions, including its MMX mission to explore the moons of Mars (a cooperation with NASA, the European Space Agency, France and Germany), now officially postponed. to 2026.
Furthermore, the mission of a small Jaxa launcher, Epsilon, also failed shortly following its takeoff in 2022.
– Many areas of application –
The H3 should allow Japan to “maintain its autonomous access to space”, according to Jaxa, whose previous heavy launcher H-IIA, which began its career in 2001, is reaching the end of its run.
As “space payloads are getting heavier and heavier”, we need to have “increasingly powerful” machines, adds this emeritus professor of astrophysics at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.
Capable of transporting up to 6 tonnes of payload in different orbits, the H3 should have applications in various fields: telecommunications satellites, meteorology and even scientific research.
And Japan might perhaps use it in the future to ensure its defense, at a time when geopolitical tensions in the Asia-Pacific are high, notably once morest the backdrop of the nuclear program and the North’s missile and satellite tests. -Koreans, underlines Mr. Cruise.
Saturday’s mission mainly aims to demonstrate the operability of the H3, but the machine also carries two small Earth observation satellites.
Concretely like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the H3 is not a reusable launcher, but its advantage lies elsewhere.
“Lifting off as quickly as possible allows the second stage engines to be more efficient in transporting spacecraft away from Earth,” he adds.
Also this launcher “has the potential to be the most economical rocket for such missions”, according to Mr. Trenti.
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