2024-02-17 01:29:51
Published17. February 2024, 02:29
Asia: Japan sends its new H3 rocket into space
The new Japanese H3 rocket successfully took off on Saturday morning. It should allow Japan to ensure more frequent but also less expensive space flights.
The rocket took off as planned on Saturday December 17 from the Japanese space base of Tanegashima,
AFP
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 after 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.
More frequent and less expensive flights
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.
Big ambitions
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 after its takeoff in 2022.
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.
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.
Defense
And Japan could perhaps use it in the future to ensure its defense, at a time when geopolitical tensions in the Asia-Pacific are high, notably against the backdrop of the nuclear program and the North’s missile and satellite tests. -Koreans, underlines Michael 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.
(AFP)
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