The Japanese H3 rocket took off as planned at 9:23 a.m. local time from the Japanese space base in Tanegashima, in the southwest of the Japanese archipelago, and “was placed in orbit” a few minutes later, said an official from the Japanese space agency Jaxa.
This success comes after that of SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon), a small Jaxa machine which managed to land precisely on the Moon last month, a historic feat for Japan.
An imposing launcher 63 m high and 574 tonnes excluding payload, the H3 is supposed to allow Japan to carry out space flights up to six times a year.
But Jaxa's reputation for high flight reliability has been damaged by the setbacks of its H3 program so far.
In February 2023, this machine co-developed with the Japanese group Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) was unable to take off due to a problem with the ignition of its booster propellants.
Then, during a second attempt last March, the rocket initially successfully took off, before deviating from its trajectory due to a failure of the second stage engines.
The Jaxa had been forced to destroy it in mid-flight.
These failures had the effect of postponing several Jaxa space missions, including its MMX mission to explore the moons of Mars in cooperation with NASA, the European Space Agency, France and Germany.
This mission has officially been postponed until 2026.
With this success, which was mainly aimed at demonstrating the operability of the H3 with the launch of two small Earth observation satellites, Japan will now be able to try to compete with foreign launchers such as the Falcon 9 from the private American company SpaceX while global demand for low-cost space launches is booming.
Except that the H3 is not a reusable launcher.
But, this rocket has a unique and innovative first stage engine, which provides greater thrust than other rockets.
“Lifting off as quickly as possible allows the second stage engines to be more efficient in transporting spacecraft away from Earth,” says Michele Trenti, director of the Melbourne Space Laboratory in Australia.
“Maintain independent access to space”
The H3 should allow Japan to “maintain its autonomous access to space”, according to Jaxa, including the previous heavy launcher H-IIA which began its career in 2001 and which is reaching the end of its run.
“Japan is a relatively small nation to undertake solo” major space programs, but the country continues to have “big ambitions in terms of space exploration,” observes British astronomer Adrian Michael Cruise, interviewed by the AFP.
As “space payloads are getting heavier and heavier”, we need to have “increasingly powerful” machines, adds this emeritus professor of astrophysics at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.
Capable of transporting up to 6 tonnes of payload in different orbits, the H3 should have applications in various fields: telecommunications satellites, meteorology and even scientific research.
And Japan could perhaps use it in the future to ensure its defense, at a time when geopolitical tensions in the Asia-Pacific are high, notably against the backdrop of the nuclear program and the North's missile and satellite tests. -Korean, underlines the scientist.