Space: Another failure of the Japanese H3 space launcher
space
Another failure of the Japanese H3 space launcher
This is the second failure of the new Japanese space launcher.
published
Kagoshima launch pad in southwestern Japan during launch Tuesday morning.
France Press agency
Japan’s next-generation H3 rocket was ordered to self-destruct shortly after takeoff on Tuesday due to a failure of unknown origin that made mission success impossible, Japan’s space agency JAXA said.
This is the second consecutive bitter failure of this new spacecraft in which Japan has pinned so much hope. In mid-February, this model failed to take off due to a problem with its boosters, forcing Jaxa to postpone its first flight. This time, the rocket was able to take off as planned at 10:37 am Japanese time (01:37 GMT) from the Tanegashima Space Center (southwest Japan).
But the task aborted after about ten minutes, when the machine’s speed seemed to drop abnormally. The command center first indicated that the ignition of the rocket’s second-stage engines “was not confirmed,” before announcing the self-destruct order because there was no longer “possibility of mission success.”
The imposing H3 model, which is the successor to the H2-A rockets, should allow Japan in the future to guarantee more frequent, safer and cheaper commercial space launches to be able to compete in particular with the Falcon 9 launcher of the American company SpaceX. to transmit satellites. Jaxa was known for its high flying reliability, but has had a series of failures since last year.
Last October, one of its smaller bombers, the Epsilon, was ordered to self-destruct shortly after liftoff due to a trajectory problem. This was the first Jaxa missile failure since 2003.
(AFP)
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