When this week the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was forced to command self-destruction of its new flagship H3 missile after a repeated unsuccessful launch, not only 63 meters of iron turned into smoke, writes FT.
Within 15 minutes of launching a rocket from the southern island of Tanegashima, an engine failure wiped out nearly a decade of effort that had been a source of national pride and a symbol of Tokyo’s technological prowess and its exorbitant ambition to enter the big leagues of the global space competition.
“The future of Japan depends on the H3 missile. We will try to make the next flight as soon as possible,” Masashi Okada, JAXA project manager, said at a press conference following Tuesday’s failed launch.
The H3, Japan’s newest rocket and its first major rocket in 30 years, was seen by the Japanese as a competitor to Elon Musk’s Falcon 9, implicated in price drops in the potentially lucrative commercial satellite launch market. The H3 rocket, developed by JAXA in partnership with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), launched at a cost of 5 billion yen ($37 million), half that of its predecessor.
Before the launch of the H3, Naohiko Abe, who heads MHI’s defense and space business, told reporters that the starting point for marketing the new rocket was that it would be just as reliable as its predecessor, the H2A, which boasts a 98 percent success rate. “With significant cost savings, H3 can compete better than H2A in today’s market,” Abe added.
Analysts say the failed first flight, already two years behind schedule, could seriously undermine Japan’s chances of becoming a viable contender in the crowded market for commercial satellite launches.
It may take more than a year for JAXA to figure out the cause of the engine failure and restart H3. During this time, competitors, including SpaceX and Arianespace, which is jointly owned by Airbus and Safran, are likely to be able to further reduce costs.
“Until recently, Japan was on the edge of the abyss, but still holding on. Now she has dropped out of the big leagues,” said Akira Sawaoka, space expert and honorary president of Daido University.
The fallout from the missile’s failure could also have implications for Japan’s national security strategy in space, an area of increasingly deep cooperation with the US to compete with Russia and China. The $1.6 billion rocket program is critical to Japan’s quest to maintain independent access to space and is the backbone of the government’s broader space strategy.
The H3 carried an Earth observation satellite and an experimental Department of Defense infrared sensor for use in monitoring missile launches and other military activities. Both were destroyed when the missile self-destructed.
Hirotaka Watanabe, a space policy expert at Osaka University, said the impact on security-related satellite programs is likely to be limited if JAXA can resolve the issue and restart H3 during fiscal year 2023-24.
“However, Japan should have anticipated several years of delay in development and prepared a contingency plan,” Watanabe said, adding that the country should have been able to return to the predecessor model H3, which will be phased out by next year.
Failed first rocket launches are not uncommon. But the failure of the H3 was an even bigger setback for a country already constrained by insufficient funding and a lack of a military program to help accelerate missile development.
“Japan’s budget for missile development is significantly less than [у соперников] abroad, but the big difference concerns national security. Both the US and China use missiles for military purposes, but Japan does not, so the number of launches is much lower,” said Ko Ogasawara, a professor at Tokyo University of Science and a former MHI rocket engineer.
For industrial conglomerate MHI, the H3 problem follows the recent collapse of another $10 billion national project to develop a regional jet that was supposed to boost Japan’s position in the global aviation market.
The future success of Japan’s rocket program depends on addressing a major weakness in Tokyo’s broader space policy, experts say.
“Japan’s space industry should not only showcase its technology, but also tie it to commercialization, where it lags behind the United States and Europe,” said Haruhiko Kataoka, vice president of the Japan Space and Security Institute.
