By SHOKO TAMAKI/ Staff Writer
February 17, 2023 at 15:13 JST
Japan’s first H-3 rocket, the expected successor to the highly reliable H-2A, failed to launch at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture on Feb. 17.
Although H-3’s main engine ignited, its solid rocket booster failed to do so, leaving the rocket on the launch pad in a cloud of smoke, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The launch time was scheduled for 10:40 a.m. on Feb. 17, and H-3 was supposed to put the Earth-observation satellite Daichi-3 into orbit.
JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. jointly developed H-3 to succeed H-2A, which is currently regarded as Japan’s “key rocket” with a near-perfect success rate.
The Feb. 17 launch had been billed as Japan’s first in around 30 years for a large, new rocket.
JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries developed a new main engine, called LE9, for H-3, which operates on liquid fuel.
LE9 is 1.4 times more powerful than existing engines in thrusting rockets, the manufacturers said.
To make H-3 more competitive internationally, JAXA aimed to slash the launch costs to 5 billion yen ($37 million), half of that for H-2A.
Daichi-3 is a successor to the first-generation Daichi, an Earth-observation satellite whose operations ended in 2011.
The plan was to use Daichi-3, which can produce images at a resolution three times higher than that of the first-generation Daichi, to observe conditions on Earth following natural disasters.
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Japan's new flagship H-3 rocket fails to take off at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture on the morning of Feb. 17. (Minako Yoshimoto)
