Japan’s inaugural launch of a next-generation rocket is being aborted via a self-destruct command because the second-stage engine failed to ignite, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said, dashing the country’s aspirations to take on Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
(Bloomberg) — Japan’s inaugural launch of a next-generation rocket is being aborted via a self-destruct command because the second-stage engine failed to ignite, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said, dashing the country’s aspirations to take on Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
JAXA decided to scrap the mission after lift-off, the agency said in a statement Tuesday. It wasn’t clear whether the self-destruct signal had yet reached the rocket.
The 63-meter-tall rocket, developed and created by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., was the country’s latest attempt to capitalize on growing demand in the global space industry.
Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, has been launching and remotely landing its Falcon orbital rockets since 2015. JAXA’s H3, on the other hand, has large parts that can be recycled, and is more competitively priced. But the rocket itself cannot be landed and launched again.
Mitsubishi Heavy shares fell as much as 3.2% after the launch failure, their biggest intraday decline in a month.
The manufacturer worked on the H3 for more than a decade. The rocket previously failed to launch on Feb. 17 after a system malfunction from the main engine stopped an ignition signal from reaching its side booster.
The H3’s primary mission was to deliver into orbit a satellite known as DAICHI-3, which is equipped with various instruments including a sensor designed to detect missile launches that’s being tested in space for the first time by the Japanese defense ministry.
(Updates with more detail.)
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