Japan's H3 flagship rocket fails to blast off
Japan's first new medium-lift launcher in three decades, the H3 rocket, fail to launch on Friday because two secondary booster engines affixed to the side of the spacecraft fail to ignite.
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An H3 rocket sits on the launch pad at Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima, southern Japan Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. (AP)
The launch of Japan's next-generation rocket failed, on Friday, due to an apparent ignition malfunction, as per the national space agency.
The H3 rocket, the successor of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) H-IIA type, was scheduled to launch in the morning from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.
However, "it appears that we failed to ignite the two solid rocket boosters, after successfully igniting the main liquid engines," JAXA spokesperson Nobuyoshi Fujimoto said as quoted by AFP.
Despite the fact that white smoke poured from the spacecraft's main engines, suggesting a successful first ignition, TV imagery showed the spacecraft sitting still on its launch platform.
The H3 rocket was designed to enable more frequent commercial launches while also improving cost efficiency and dependability.
It is worth noting that the incident is not JAXA's only recent launch failure.
After takeoff, the agency was forced to issue a self-destruct command to its solid-fuel Epsilon rocket in October. It was launching satellites into space to test new technology.
This was Japan's first unsuccessful rocket launch since 2003.
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