Japan’s newest rocket failed its first test flight.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) new H3 rocket lifted off from Tanegashima Space Center on Monday, March 6 at 8:37 p.m. EST (01:37 GMT and 10:37 Japan Standard Time on March 7). 5 minutes and 27 seconds after liftoff, a command was sent to the rocket for stage separation and second stage ignition. Just after seven minutes into the flight, launch commentators on JAXA’s YouTube live stream noted that the rocket’s speed was decreasing and second-stage ignition could not be confirmed.
Mission controllers shortly thereafter issued a command to destroy the rocket, ending its first test flight. “A destroy command was issued to the launcher, as there was no possibility of achieving the mission,” read a caption from JAXA’s livestream.
Monday’s liftoff was the H3’s second attempt at a first launch. The H3 aborted its first attempt on February 16, a result that JAXA ultimately attributed to a problem with the electrical system which powers the rocket’s first-stage LE-9 engines.
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On board the rocket when the kill command was issued was the Advanced Earth Observation Satellite-3 (ALOS-3), also known as DAICHI-3, heading into a sun-synchronous orbit 669 km away. above the Earth. It was designed to provide high-resolution images of Japan and other regions in swaths 43 miles (70 kilometers) wide with resolution as sharp as 2.6 feet (0.8 meters).
The failed launch comes after a decade of joint development by JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Problems with preparing the rocket’s powerful LE-9 liquid hydrogen-oxygen engines led to significant delays in the first launch.
The H3 is 187 feet or 207 feet tall (57 or 63 m), depending on the length of two possible payload fairings that can be used for each mission. The rocket is capable of delivering “4 tons or more” to a 310-mile (500 km) high sun-synchronous orbit and “6.5 tons or more” to a geostationary transfer orbit, according (opens in a new tab) to the JAXA specs page.
The version that failed on Monday (H3-22) carried two solid propellant side thrusters, but the rocket can be delivered with four such thrusters to increase its carrying capacity. Monday’s test flight also used just a pair of LE-9 engines, while higher-performance variants of the rocket use three LE-9s.
The new launcher will replace the H-IIA Rocketthe current Japanese launcher, which should make its last flight in 2024.
The consumable H3 is designed for high flexibility, reliability and better value for money than the H-IIA, according to JAXA. It faces challenges in the international launch market, however, after the emergence of SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9which has proven to be extremely reliable and cost effective.
Despite this, recent developments elsewhere have created opportunities for the H3, according to Marco Aliberti, a senior fellow at the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) in Vienna.
“THE cut russian rockets of this market, combined with the absence of a competing European offer, open up new possibilities for Japanese launchers, historically absent from the commercial market,” said Aliberti.
Yui Nakama, visiting scholar at ESPI of the University of Tokyo, noted that the Japanese government has decided to significantly expand the national rocket launch facilities in May 2022 to address the global shortage of launch capacity at Following The Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The H3 will have to prove its reliability once it takes off, however, and will need support in the form of the Japanese government reserving the launcher for missions. One source of missions will be Japan’s security needs.
“The stable operation of H3 will make a significant contribution to Japan’s security,” Nakama said. “One of the main objectives of the H3 is to maintain its autonomy, aiming to operate its own main launcher that meets the government’s mission of national security.”
“This is critical in light of China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region, where space defense has become a key program.”
In the longer term, the H3 could potentially play an important role in Japan’s aspiration for crewed launch capabilities, Aliberti said.
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