Japan space agency rocket explodes during engine test

a lot of this happening recently with stuff out of japan...

Houston we have a problem

No problem at all. There will be things learned and those will be improved for the next launch.

All part of the learning curve. Stuff happens.

This is why they test them.

a lot of this happening recently with stuff out of japan...

Some things can fix just by bowing but other things will be public media consumption, world see Japan limitation now.

This year in March

https://www.engadget.com/japan-h3-rocket-self-destructs-failed-launch-072818999.html

Another one in April

https://www.space.com/moon-lander-ispace-hakuto-r-crash-lunar-terrain

With current population decline that come with less competent people who can do things right. I have doubt this will be the last one.

Japan isn’t having much luck with its space program of late. Kinda puts things in perspective when u compare it to what the US has achieved. It’s like night and day.

stickman1760Today  05:21 pm JST

Japan isn’t having much luck with its space program of late. Kinda puts things in perspective when u compare it to what the US has achieved. It’s like night and day.

Remind me again of just how many Space Shuttles blew up killing just how many astronauts.

We learn from our mistakes. BUT!

Don’t worry. You learn from your failures. Divert some pachinko money into Japan’s space programs.

Maybe again those ‘sophisticated’ 3D printer generated phantasy parts, but who am I to know that or to warn against using them after all those unsuccessful attempts recently.

Why even bother - invest in the planet under your feet - Earth.

Japan better stop and withdrawn her space program before a catastrophic accident happened. Japan is way behind China in space exploration and she is just doing something nothing contribution but repeating the path of someone has walked through!

Successful orbital launches by country 2023, launch/success:

USA 56/52

China 27/27

Russia 9/9

India 4/4

Europe 2/2

Japan 2/1

South Korea 1/1

North Korea 0/1

Source: Wikipedia

Japan soft landed on a small comet and brought back specimen. That's quite unique and probably harder to do than the moon stuff. China learned from the Soviet advisers and had US trained experts who returned to do the engineering (before most of them got into trouble during the Cultural Revolution).

Not again!!!

All that helium 3 discovered on the moon is a game changer for nuclear power.

Also water and other valuable resources to mine or exploit

If they can't even launch a rocket without a 50/50 chance of it blowing up, all that mining is a looooooong way away!!!

India 1 - 0 Japan

What is going on ??

SOS Elon Musk.

@kyushubill Do you know anything about rockets. You missed a very important part of the article and you said no problem at all. There's definitely a PROBLEM and it seems that Japan has a problem with engineering and trying to understand the failures they are experiencing during second stage which is one of the most critical stages to get the rocket to lift off they have multiple problems.

The explosion took place about a minute into the test of the second stage engine, the official said. JAXA's new medium-lift H-3 rocket was ordered to self-destruct on its debut flight in March, when its second-stage engine did not ignite as planned. That followed the failure of the agency's solid-fuel Epsilon-6 rocket in October.

No problem at all. There will be things learned and those will be improved for the next launch.

The recent failures seem to be issues with the second stage engine. Perhaps a design flaw that needs to be isolated and corrected in order to move forward.

These mistakes are costly but most nations successful in space endevours had to overcome explosive failures of their own, before getting past them. As long as Japan keeps trying, they will get back to a successful track. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Recent failure of JAXA might be result in the Japan government (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan) having not willing to invest for science for decades

I suppose Japan should invest more for Space technologies to be able to compete with other countries.

@Harry_Gatto You seem to only remember terrible things perhaps you can't remember how many SUCCESSFUL shuttle missions they had before the US had Space Shuttle Mishaps. Let me REFRESH your memory there were only two shuttle missions that blew up and that was on PROVEN TECHNOLOGY and I can tell you how many successful missions there were. How do I know I supported a number of those missions. I can also read, the JT paper has already indicated over three Rocket failures in Japan. On another note there are many more car accidents than their are airplane accidents so whats your point? How many times have you taken a fall and tripped and fell on your head? I bet you can't remember.

stickman1760Today  05:21 pm JST

Japan isn’t having much luck with its space program of late. Kinda puts things in perspective when u compare it to what the US has achieved. It’s like night and day.

Remind me again of just how many Space Shuttles blew up killing just how many astronauts.

Time to turn to North Korea for help…

A private Chinese company launched into orbit on Wednesday the world's first methane-liquid oxygen rocket, beating U.S. rivals in sending what could become the next generation of launch vehicles into space.

JAXA WE HAVE A PROBLEM.

Noshiro City, Akita Prefecture - An important piece of information that was not included in the Thomson Reuters article. Japan Times editors ought to catch the lack of details, and add them, when posting things skimmed from other sources. I was trying to figure out whether this was at the Tanegashima or the Uchinoura launch sites, both located in Kagoshima Prefecture. I wasn't even aware that there was a test site in Akita. A shame that I had to rely on the New York Post rather than a Japanese source to find where in Japan this happened. https://nypost.com/2023/07/14/japan-space-agency-rocket-engine-explodes-during-test/

The main thing is that no one got hurt.

A private Chinese company launched into orbit on Wednesday the world's first methane-liquid oxygen rocket, beating U.S. rivals in sending what could become the next generation of launch vehicles into space.

India has today successfully launched it's third moon mission rocket.

Again?

Space is hard. Watching someone else do it doesn't count. Until your team tries to accomplish the same feat, you don't really know the hundreds of thousands of details.

Sometimes testing to failure is the point. Combustion chambers behave different under flight conditions than on a test stand or just using normal pressure testing without any combustion involved. It is rocket science, after all.

India has today successfully launched it's third moon mission rocket.

Launching hasn't been the issue with India's moon missions. Landing is. Whenever any country is doing peaceful exploration in space, I hope for their success and don't want to discourage them from learning, whatever that learning may be. The good and the bad.

We learn more from our failures than we do from successes.

Epsilon is Japan's thinly veiled ICBM program, FYI.

Jesus. If our idiot billionaire Musk can do it, I would hope Japan could. Hope you can pull it together again, Japan.

Jesus. If our idiot billionaire Musk can do it, I would hope Japan could.

Musk is an idiot at running a social networking company. But he's good at his bread and butter. It's why he's one of the richest men in the world - he met qualified levels of success with the companies he was running. That's not the mark of an idiot.

Rockets are not easy. There is literally an idiom expressing extreme intelligence as being a 'rocket scientist'.

This is not a bad thing. It was a test. Those were results. Much will be learned form them.

NASA is very risk-adverse when developing physical hardware, even when no lives are at stake. Taxpayer money is taken quite seriously there (unlike many of our gubment agencies). SpaceX on the other hand sees catastrophic failure as being a great learning experience and isn't afraid to blow a bunch of stuff up during development. That's the main reason why they make progress with development much quicker than NASA.

Government space agencies could use a page from that playbook.

@Xavier Blind hatred reflects on the hater.

Chinese space officials have said the new samples will be shared with the UN and international partners. The Chinese public will also get to see some of the materials when they are put on display in a national museum.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55323176#

Much of America's tech talents are immigrants and 30% of scientists at NASA.

That's true of tech, but not of NASA. To work for NASA, you must be a US Citizen. However, NASA employs thousands of contractors who don't have to be US Citizens, but they will be restricted from working on any ITAR related efforts unless their citizenship country is a signatory of the ITAR agreement.

I worked at NASA-JSC as a contractor. I did rocket science there. For some projects we had international teams. On one project, I worked with French and Taiwanese citizens. All the others were US citizens. At my first NASA contracting job, everyone was required to be a US citizen. In fact, one of my coworkers married a non-citizen and was forced to change to a less sensitive job.

The foreigners working for NASA was nowhere near 30%. I doubt even 1% were, but I didn't count. When we were working launches with EU partners, the POCC would fill with 25-50 "foreigners" at workstations to deal with their payloads.

SpaceX is a private company , but in 2022, Musk stated that he only hired US Citizens because their main customer is the US Govt and a US Govt security clearance is required. I don't feel free to post about US govt clearances.

The US considers everything related to rockets to be military-grade technology and state secrets, so SpaceX only employs Americans. SpaceX is not permitted to share its technology with anyone who is not a US citizen.

kyushubillJuly 14  05:02 pm JST

No problem at all. There will be things learned and those will be improved for the next launch.

This is a big reason why there are so many unmanned missions and attempts when something new is attempted. Man started out in space altogether in small steps. First was the little ball Sputnik. Then Sputnik 2 had Laika, a dog passenger who died from radiation nobody knew about. Then NASA from the US launched Ham the chimp in a shielded capsule and he came back alive. That set the stage for man going to space, the first 3 were Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shephard, John Glenn.

And the same goes for exploring planets. The USSR were the first to send robot landers to Venus and Mars and they were destroyed due to circumstances no one knew about. NASA learned from this and the Viking robot landings on Mars were successful and its Venus landers lasted a little longer. Venus is a nasty planet. And of course everything out to Pluto and beyond has been by robots but mankind will venture out there too one of these days.

Jimmy HoffaJuly 14  04:50 pm JST

No injuries thank goodness

Better to lose hardware than to lose lives.

wallaceJuly 14  05:06 pm JST

All part of the learning curve. Stuff happens.sometimes

Space exploration is humanity's r/evolution. We've only started taking baby steps. As a teenager 40 years ago I remember going outside near a snowbank just to see a Space Shuttle Orbiter pass overhead in the frigid sky. Now sometimes I see the Int'l Space Station and Tiangong (Chinese space station) pass overhead at night; sometimes more than once during a night, sometimes even both stations!

JAXA has already made some history with the Hayabusa 2 mission to the asteroid Ryukyu, being the first to dig asteroid rocks and dust and return it to Earth. There will be more progress by them and others and yes, some mistakes. You screw up, you learn. Better luck next time, JAXA.

>

theFuToday  02:10 am JST

Much of America's tech talents are immigrants and 30% of scientists at NASA.

That's true of tech, but not of NASA. To work for NASA, you must be a US Citizen. However, NASA employs thousands of contractors who don't have to be US Citizens, but they will be restricted from working on any ITAR related efforts unless their citizenship country is a signatory of the ITAR agreement.

I worked at NASA-JSC as a contractor. I did rocket science there. For some projects we had international teams. On one project, I worked with French and Taiwanese citizens. All the others were US citizens. At my first NASA contracting job, everyone was required to be a US citizen. In fact, one of my coworkers married a non-citizen and was forced to change to a less sensitive job.

The foreigners working for NASA was nowhere near 30%.

When I was in the Navy stationed in Orlando I saw a Space Shuttle on a launching pad being prepared for the launch next week. Foreign tourists (and anybody else who had no clearances) were allowed to photograph it (I did) but that was it. It had a Saudi astronaut as a guest for the mission. The first foreigner on a US mission was a German on a Shuttle flight in 1983 and there's been a select few others.

And whoever works there or has any access there is strictly limited as well. I remember seeing the Challenger explosion live on TV in early 1986. Since the US was about to be or maybe already was at war with Libya there was speculation about whether Libyan agents somehow sneaked in and sabotaged the Shuttle launch. Not a chance. Security at KSC is much too tight for that to happen. It was an unusually cold day in Florida which had everything to do with the disaster.

Japan space agency rocket explodes during engine test

Please fix the title JT, it is totally misleading. The engine was not attatched to the rocket structure, it was attached to an engine testing platform so no, no rocket exploded nor was any rocket body damaged since no rocket was present during the engine test.

XavierToday  12:21 pm JST

deanzaZZRToday 01:50 am JST

@Xavier Blind hatred reflects on the hater.

Your link is about a moon sample return mission. The US did that in 1969, and also shared the samples with many countries.

JAXA brought back a sample from an asteroid, which had never been done before (NASA is attempting a similar mission at the moment).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample-return_mission#List_of_missions

And if I recall correctly, a Soviet robot lander brought back a moon sample in 1969, just before Apollo 11 landed the first people on the moon. And of course JAXA did so a few years ago from the asteroid Ryukyu. There's a first time for everything.

starpunkToday 01:40 pm JST

And if I recall correctly, a Soviet robot lander brought back a moon sample in 1969, just before Apollo 11 landed the first people on the moon.

It was called Luna 15 and took place at the same time as the Apollo 11. It was thought to be a last ditch effort by the Soviet Union to return a lunar sample before the United States but due to technical problems, the mission failed and Luna 15 crashed on the lunar surface.

starpunkToday 01:40 pm JST

And if I recall correctly, a Soviet robot lander brought back a moon sample in 1969, just before Apollo 11 landed the first people on the moon.

It was called Luna 15 and took place at the same time as the Apollo 11. It was thought to be a last ditch effort by the Soviet Union to return a lunar sample before the United States but due to technical problems, the mission failed and Luna 15 crashed on the lunar surface.

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1969-058A

That's a shame

I hate when that happens.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Albert Einstein

Better to happen now on test, rather than 20 seconds after launch with the possibility of pilots and crew on board.

Makes CO2 look like a non issue, I'd hate to know what's in that smoke