Japan was forced to destroy its new $1.5 billion space rocket around 14 minutes into its debut flight Tuesday.
Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) told reporters it had to issue a self-destruct command at 10:52 a.m. Japan Standard Time (20:52 EST Monday), afterthe rocket’s ignition failedas it entered its second stage, reported Associated Press.
The187 feet-high H3 rocketwas the first medium-lift spacecraft created in Japan for around three decades and was carrying a missile-monitoring satellite called the Advanced Land Observation Satellite or ALOS-3, added BBC News.
Yasuhiro Funo, JAXA director for launch implementation, told AP that due to the ignition failure, the rocket was not going to reach its targeted orbit and therefore had to be destroyed. The debris from the rocket fell into the ocean off the eastern coast of the Philippines, the outlet added.
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Japan’s science minister Keiko Nagaoka said in a statement that the rocket’s demise was “extremely regrettable” and apologized for “failing to meet the expectations of the public and related parties,” per BBC News.
Nagaoka added that authorities would investigate what led to the engine failure after the rocket took off from Tanegashima Space Center, around 950 miles south of Tokyo.
The self-destruction follows an aborted launch of the H3 on Feb. 17., whentwo secondary booster engines failed to igniteon the launch pad, reported CNN.
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“Unlike the previous cancellation and postponement,this time it was a complete failure,” Hirotaka Watanabe, a space policy professor at Osaka University told Reuters.
“This will have a serious impact on Japan’s future space policy, space business and technological competitiveness,” he added, referring to the technological space race between companies includingElon Musk’s SpaceX and France’s Arianespace.
Despite the failure of the mission, however, JAXA is not giving up on creating a successful H3 rocket.
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“Our top priority is to do everything we can to find the cause and regain the trust in our rockets,” said JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa at a joint news conference, per AP. “We need to figure out what we should do to successfully achieve the next launch.”
“Delays and additional costs are both burdens, but we will achieve international overall competitiveness from the perspectives of cost and user-friendliness in delivering satellites,” he added.
source: people.com
