Japan’s space hopes boosted with H3 rocket launch

TOKYO: A Japanese flagship H3 rocket lifted off from a space station in southwestern Japan on Saturday, overcoming its failed debut launch a year ago and buoying hope for the East Asian country to be competitive in the global space race.

The rocket blasted off on time from a launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center on Saturday morning, two days after its originally scheduled liftoff was delayed due to bad weather.

The rocket successfully achieved its planned trajectory, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said, and released two small observation satellites.

“We feel so relieved to be able to announce the good results,” JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa told a news conference.

H3’s main goals are to secure independent access to space and to acquire global competitiveness amid growing international demand for satellite launches.

“We made a big first step today toward achieving” those goals, Yamakawa said.

Saturday’s success is a boost for Japan’s space program following a recent streak of successes, including a historic precision touchdown of an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon last month.

The launch was closely watched as a test for Japan’s space development after H3 failed in its debut flight last March. JAXA and its main contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), have been developing H3 as a successor to its current mainstay, H-2A, which is set to retire after two more flights.

As the rocket soared and released its first payload successfully, project members at the JAXA command center cheered and hugged each other in a livestreaming footage. The Japan Broadcasting Corp., or NHK, said some staff at a press center were seen crying with relief and joy.

JAXA H3 Project Manager Masashi Okada called the result “perfect,” saying H3 cleared all missions set for Saturday’s flight.

“I now feel a heavy load taken off my shoulders. But now is the real start for H3, and we will work to steadily improve it,” he said.

The H3 No. 2 rocket was decorated with thousands of stickers carrying cheering messages sent from well-wishers around the country.

In its debut flight last March, the rocket had to be destroyed along with its payload, the advanced land observation satellite, or ALOS-3, triggering disappointment and uncertainty about Japan’s space exploration plans.

JAXA and MHI have since identified and mitigated the possible electrical issues that led to the failure to ignite

H3 rocket’s second-stage engine, and carefully rehearsed for the upcoming second test flight. Just to be safe, the rocket this time carried a mockup of the ALOS satellite, called VEP-4, which was not designed to be released.

Two real microsatellites — observation satellite CE-SAT-IE developed by Canon Electronics; and Tirsat, which was co-developed by a number of companies and universities — were piggybacked on H3. Their makers said they were willing to take the chance as they see a growing market in the satellite business.

H3 is designed to carry larger payloads than H-2A at much lower costs of about 50 billion yen ($330 million) to be globally competitive.

Masayuki Eguchi, head of defense and space segment at MHI, said his company hoped to be more price-competitive after about a dozen more launches.

Japan’s space program notched a series of successes recently. Last month, JAXA made the world’s first “pinpoint” moon landing and capturing of lunar data by the unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon spacecraft that had been launched from the H-2A rocket, days after the 48th H-2A rocket succeeded in placing a spy satellite into its planned orbit.