The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency aborted the launch of the first of its new flagship series H3 rockets yesterday, which was carrying an observation satellite also fitted with an experimental infrared sensor intended to detect missile launches.
The countdown had started. The agency’s livestream and television footage showed white smoke billowing from its main engine.
However, a pair of auxiliary rockets did not subsequently ignite, an announcement at the launch site said.
Photo: Reuters
Further details, including the reason for the suspension, were not immediately available. The agency was expected to provide an explanation later.
Yesterday’s launch problem at the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan is a setback for the country’s space program, which suffered a failed launch in October last year of an Epsilon-series rocket.
Yesterday’s launch was delayed from earlier in the week due to weather, after more than a two-year postponement from 2020 because of an engine development delay.
The rocket — Japan’s first new series in more than 22 years — carries an Advanced Land Observation Satellite primarily tasked with Earth observation and data collection for disaster response and map-making.
The H3 payload also includes an infrared sensor developed by the Japanese Ministry of Defense that can monitor military activity including missile launches.
The ¥200 billion (US$1.48 billion) H3 rocket was jointly developed by the agency and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as a successor to the H-2A rocket, which is due to retire after 20 years of service and its milestone 50th launch expected within the coming years.
The H3, which is about 60m long, can accommodate more satellites and other payloads than the earlier 53m H-2A model, with its launch cost slashed by half at about ¥50 million by simplifying the design, manufacturing and operation in a bid to be lure more customers for its space launch service.
Space launch business has been increasingly competitive, as the industry has been led by SpaceX and Arianespace.
The H3 rocket’s main engine was newly developed with fewer parts by altering the combustion method while replacing the majority of rocket components with existing auto parts.
HAVANA: Repeated blackouts have left residents of the Cuban capital concerned about food, water supply and the nation’s future, but so far, there have been few protests Maria Elena Cardenas, 76, lives in a municipal shelter on Amargura Street in Havana’s colonial old town. The building has an elegant past, but for the last few days Maria has been cooking with sticks she had found on the street. “You know, we Cubans manage the best we can,” she said. She lives in the shelter because her home collapsed, a regular occurrence in the poorest, oldest parts of the beautiful city. Cuba’s government has spent the last days attempting to get the island’s national grid functioning after repeated island-wide blackouts. Without power, sleep becomes difficult in the heat, food
U-TURN? Trami was moving northwest toward Vietnam yesterday, but high-pressure winds and other factors could force it to turn back toward the Philippines Tropical Storm Trami blew away from the northwestern Philippines yesterday, leaving at least 65 people dead in landslides and extensive flooding that forced authorities to scramble for more rescue boats to save thousands of terrified people, who were trapped, some on their roofs. However, the onslaught might not be over: State forecasters raised the rare possibility that the storm — the 11th and one of the deadliest to hit the Philippines this year — could make a U-turn next week as it is pushed back by high-pressure winds in the South China Sea. A Philippine provincial police chief yesterday said that 33
The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms, but that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet. One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale, but as new research shows, that disaster actually might have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as “a giant fertilizer bomb” for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the
PROPAGANDA: The leaflets attacked the South Korean president and first lady with phrases such as: ‘It’s fortunate that President Yoon and his wife have no children’ North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital, Seoul, yesterday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady. The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border. They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable. The leaflets included photographs of the