Space wreck: Here's why Japan was forced to destroy a rocket in space
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With the H3, Japan hopes to help NASA in its race to send people to the moon again through its Gateway lunar space station.
Japan faced a major defeat in its space endeavour it was forced to destroy a new medium-lift rocket it launched into space on Tuesday after the vehicle's second-stage engine failed to ignite.
The quest for reaching space has become wider than ever, with Elon Musk's SpaceX going ahead all guns blazing in the field. SpaceX and NASA recently sent four astronauts of the Crew 6 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Crew Dragon capsule. The capsule arrived safely on Friday carrying two US astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and a United Arab Emirates astronaut on a six-month science mission.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) said it sent a self-destruct signal to the rocket after the engine failure. The 57-metre (187 ft) tall H3 rocket had lifted off from the JAXA Tanegashima spaceport. An earlier launch of the vehicle was aborted last month.
The H3 was carrying the ALOS-3, a disaster management land observation satellite that is also equipped with an experimental infrared sensor designed to detect North Korean ballistic missile launches.
The impact of the failed launch had a direct bearing on the shares of the company that had built the H3. Shares in Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI) fell 1.8 per cent in morning trade, while the broader Japanese benchmark index was up 0.4 per cent.
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Tuesday, March 7, 2023 at 3:05 am