The launch of the Japanese H3 rocket is interrupted after a failure was detected

The long awaited The maiden flight of Japan’s new flagship H3 rocket was aborted on Friday after an onboard system detected an anomaly and failed to fire its booster engines, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency reported according to Kyodo News.

The abrupt interruption, moments before launch, dealt a setback for the program, already plagued by a series of delays, as the country tries to gain a foothold in the increasingly competitive business of launching satellites with its successor. highly reliable H2A launch vehicle.

The H3 rocket, carrying an Earth observation satellite as a payload, did not lift off from the Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima island in the southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima on Friday morning despite the countdown ending. of the launch.

“An onboard system detected an abnormality and did not send ignition signals to the thrusters,” JAXA project manager Masashi Okada told an afternoon online news conference, adding that there was no problem with the engine. main engine.

“It’s hard to call it a failure,” Okada said repeatedly, stressing that the safety devices had worked properly. “The system recognized the anomaly and the launch was aborted” as planned, he added.

The thrusters are attached to the sides of the central fuselage.

Okada was emotional at times, apologizing to the people who had worked on the project and to the public who had come to see the takeoff.

The agency plans to try again in a week or two, according to a government official. However, Okada suggested that the agency is looking at a slightly longer time frame, saying that it will try to launch by the end of March, after proper checks have been carried out.

The abrupt interruption, moments before the launch, was a setback for the program

The agency has reserved the period between February 18 and March 10 as a secondary release window.

“After clarifying the cause of the problem, we expect the H3 to maintain or even exceed the reliability of the already highly reliable 2A,” he added.

It was a great disappointment for the nearly 1,000 people who had come to witness the occasion from a park located about 6 kilometers from the space center.

The crowd roared as white smoke billowed from the launch pad area, and children yelled to urge the rocket into the air.

A family of four who had dreamed of seeing a rocket launch for more than 10 years came from the western Yamaguchi Prefecture.

“It was very sad to see the smoke go away, I almost cried,” said Harumi Yoshidomi, a 35-year-old housewife.

The rocket is supposed to give Japan continuous access to space by launching satellites and probes related to government missions. It is also seen as key to the country’s participation in the next generation of space development, including the US-led lunar exploration program.

On board the rocket is the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-3, which is expected to become a key tool for government disaster management efforts.

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The satellite also carries a sensor from the Defense Ministry’s procurement agency capable of detecting two types of infrared rays. It will be tested if it can detect ballistic missile launches.

“I don’t think this will have an immediate effect on our country’s space policy,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said later on Friday.

The rocket is supposed to give Japan continued access to space by launching satellites and probes related to government missions.

The H3 rocket is the first renewal of the country’s main launch vehicle in some 20 years.

Its launch was scheduled for the end of March 2021, but the date was delayed by about two years due to problems with the new LE-9 first stage engine and the replacement of parts after the failure of the Epsilon-6 rocket in October.

The failure of that smaller rocket meant that last year marked the first time in 18 years that there had not been a single successful launch of a domestically developed rocket in Japan.

The H3 rocket is expected to carry a new unmanned cargo carrier that will deliver supplies and materials to the International Space Station and Gateway, a planned lunar-orbiting outpost under the US-led Artemis space program.

Priced at 5 billion yen ($37 million), the H3 rocket costs about half that of its H2A predecessor, but has 1.3 times the satellite launch capacity.

Global competition has intensified since the entry into the market of the American company SpaceX, which has a strong history of rocket launches.

Japan hopes to increase orders for satellite launches from domestic and international customers touting the 97.8% success rate of the H2A rocket, which has failed only once out of 46 launches since its introduction in 2001.