Japan’s space agency will try to launch its new flagship rocket on Saturday, hoping for a third time lucky following years of delays and two aborted attempts. The next-generation H3 rocket has been mooted as a possible competitor to Space X’s Falcon 9, and could one day be used to deliver cargo to bases on the Moon.
But that’s only if Japan — which last month landed an unmanned probe on the Moon at a wonky angle — can get it into orbit. The first H3 launch a year ago was abandoned after ignition issues left the rocket standing motionless on the ground.
On the second try in March, technical problems meant a destruct command was issued shortly after the blast-off. Designed for “high flexibility, high reliability, and high-cost performance”, the H3 will “maintain Japan’s autonomous access to space”, space agency JAXA says.
The rocket, billed as a flexible and cost-effective new flagship, is scheduled to lift off between 9:22 am and 1:06 pm (0022 and 0406 GMT) from the Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan. Co-developed with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and intended for more frequent commercial launches, it is the successor to the country’s H-IIA model, which debuted in 2001.
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H3 will be “an all-rounder — able to launch satellites into Earth orbit, serve as a supply vehicle for space stations, and go to the Moon,” said associate professor Alice Gorman, a space exploration expert at Flinders University.
But “there’s a common saying that ‘space is hard’, to explain why launch failures are a fact of life,” she told AFP, comparing the attempts to “training for a marathon”. A successful launch on Saturday would bolster JAXA’s reputation after a string of failures, including of a different rocket, a solid-fuel model called the Epsilon-6.