Tokyo, Oct. 12 (BNA) A rocket carrying eight satellites failed immediately after takeoff on Wednesday and had to be thwarted by a self-destruct command, the Japan Space Agency said, in the country’s first failed rocket launch in nearly 20 years.
The head of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Hiroshi Yamakawa, said the Epsilon-6 rocket was not in the correct position to orbit the Earth and its flight had to be aborted less than seven minutes after liftoff from the Oshinura Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture, southern Japan. The Associated Press (AP) reported in an online news conference.
“We deeply apologize for our failure to meet the expectations” of local officials and those involved in developing the satellites, Yamakawa said, pledging to help investigate the cause of the failure.
JAXA officials said the agency sent a self-destruct signal after it determined the missile was not able to fly safely and enter the planned orbit. JAXA said the missile and its payloads were believed to have fallen into the sea east of the Philippines.
The agency said that the cause of the failure is still being investigated.
The Epsilon missile carried eight payloads, including two developed by a private company based in Fukuoka, another southern prefecture. This was the first time that an Epsilon missile had carried commercially developed payloads.
Yasuhiro Ono, who directed the Epsilon-6 launch, acknowledged that the failure could affect Epsilon’s potential future launch business. A commercial launch under an upgraded version, Epsilon-S, by IHI Aerospace, a Japanese company, is planned for a Vietnamese satellite next year.
“Our first and most important task is to investigate the cause and take action firmly,” Ono said.
The Epsilon-6’s 26-meter (85 ft), 95.6-ton, solid-fuel missile is the last version before JAXA plans to develop another version, the Epsilon-S. After five upgrades since early 2010, the Epsilon-6 is designed for compact launch as JAXA aims to advance its commercial satellite launch business.
Wednesday’s failure ended the Epsilon series’ success records since it first launched the original in 2013. It was also JAXA’s first since the H2A rocket failure in 2003.
The launch, originally scheduled for last Friday, was postponed due to the location of a satellite in space.
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