On October 12, an Epsilon rocket was launched from the territory of the Utinoura Space Center. Unfortunately, there was a failure at the work site of the third stage, because of which the specialists had to activate the self-destruct system of the carrier.
The Epsilon rocket is designed to launch cargo weighing up to 1.5 tons into near-Earth orbit. It consists of three solid fuel stages with the possibility of adding a fourth liquid stage. Since its commissioning in 2013, the rocket has made six flights. The first five of them were completely successful.
As part of its sixth mission, Epsilon was to launch eight spacecraft into orbit. The main cargo of the mission was the 110-kilogram RAISE-3 satellite, intended for testing various innovative technologies. The remaining loads were experimental cubesats.
The rocket successfully broke away from the launch pad, its first two stages worked in normal mode. But when Epsilon switched to the third stage, a failure occurred. As a result, the MCC decided to activate the missile self-destruct system. Thus, Japan’s first space mission in 2022 ended in failure.
At the moment, the Japanese Aerospace Agency has not provided any details about the accident. It is only known that its specialists have already begun to investigate its causes.
Recall that earlier we wrote about the accident of the New Shepard suborbital rocket.
According to https://www.space.com
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