Japan’s next-generation H3 rocket was ordered to self-destruct shortly after liftoff on Tuesday due to a failure of as yet unknown origin, Japanese space agency JAXA said. The failure made mission success impossible.
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 JAXA to postpone its maiden flight.
This time around, the rocket managed to lift off as scheduled at 10:37 a.m. Japanese time (02:37 a.m. in Switzerland) from the Tanegashima space center in southwestern Japan. But the mission was aborted about ten minutes later, when the speed of the machine seemed to decrease abnormally.
The command center first said the ignition of the rocket’s second-stage engines was ‘unconfirmed’, before issuing a self-destruct order, because there were no more ‘ possibility of successfully completing the mission.
Chess Series
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.
JAXA used to be known for the high reliability of its flights, but it has experienced a series of failures since last year.
Last October, another of its smaller launchers, Epsilon, also received a self-destruct order shortly after takeoff due to a trajectory problem. It was the first failure for a JAXA rocket since 2003.
/ATS