Japan’s private rocket tumbled after launch

Space One aims to become the first Japanese private company to put a satellite into orbit with the Kairos 2 rocket. However, not long after taking off at about 11 a.m. yesterday (local time) from the airport Kii Space, Wakayama Prefecture, this 18 m high rocket began to somersault.

The flight ended at an altitude of 100 km, about 3 minutes after launch, when Space One detected abnormalities in the rocket’s first stage engine and flight path. The rocket is carrying five satellites developed by Japanese commercial companies, students and a Taiwanese company.

“We would like to apologize to our customers and all parties involved in the launch for not being able to complete the mission. We regret that we did not meet our backers’ expectations. Space One will determine the cause of the incident as soon as possible and attempt to launch again, contributing to further expansion of the space industry by providing launch services with small rockets,” Space One announced after the launch.

The Kairos rocket was launched twice and both failed. The first launch took place in March. Just about 5 seconds after launch, the flight ended abruptly when the abort system was activated, causing the rocket to explode. There was no damage to infrastructure and no one was injured, but debris rained across the launch site.

Kairos consists of 4 stages, 3 stages push solid fuel and the upper stage uses liquid fuel. It is designed to carry up to 250 kg into low Earth orbit, helping to fill a gap in Japan’s current competitiveness in the launch market.

The Kairos failure is not the only problem in Japan’s rocket launch sector this year. In November, an engine exploded during a test of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) new Epsilon S rocket. The explosion caused a large fire with columns of smoke rising high but did not cause any casualties.