Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Japan has a history of launching orbital rockets, and its history goes back about half a century. During this time, its launch industry has focused primarily on orbiting national payloads such as earth observation satellites for communications, global positioning and sovereignty purposes.
However, with the introduction of the H2-A rocket in 2001, the country’s launch industry attempted to enter the commercial launch market, sending satellites into space for other countries and private companies. With a lift capacity roughly equivalent to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster, Japan has had several commercial successes, including the notable launch of his 2020 Emirates Mars mission.
But the H2-A rocket, built by Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, never really broke through. With a launch price of about $90 million, the H2A rocket is about 50% more expensive than SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. As a result, his H2A booster in Japan launches only a few times a year, mainly serving the Japanese government.
Low price
The problem was already apparent nearly a decade ago, so Japan’s space agency, JAXA, gave the go-ahead to develop the next-generation H3 rocket. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries focused on cost when developing new models. The goal was to sell the H3 in its base configuration for he would sell for $51 million per launch. Japan was expected to double its launch frequency from about four to eight per year at a lower cost.
“I stick to that price,” Hiroshi Ogasawara, vice president of Mitsubishi’s space systems division, told Ars in 2018. If it cannot be achieved, the development program will be completely discontinued. ”
At the time, Japan was aiming to launch a new rocket by March 2021. However, a subsequent problem arose during testing of the rocket’s LE-9 main engine, which burns liquid oxygen and hydrogen. This delayed Rocket’s debut by about two years. But now the moment has finally arrived.
According to JAXA, weather permitting, the H3 rocket’s maiden flight is scheduled to take place on Friday, February 17 at 1:37 UTC from Tanegashima, Japan. (This is 10:37 a.m. local time in Japan and 8:37 p.m. Thursday in the United States.) The rocket will carry the Advanced Land Observing Satellite 3 payload into JAXA’s sun-synchronous orbit.
too late?
All this is good, but so far relatively few commercial customers have signed on for Japan’s new rocket, other than satellite operator Inmarsat. This is due to delays in development and uncertainty about when the H3 rocket will actually fly.
But another problem is that the rocket has no clear advantage over the extremely reliable Falcon 9, which has had 170 consecutive successful launches since 2016. Additionally, it is not clear at what price Mitsubishi is actually selling its H3 rocket. , and whether it can still match the reliability of Falcon 9’s schedule, which launches more than once a week.
There is another, more fundamental problem. When Japanese engineers began designing his H3 rocket in 2013, they weren’t worried about reusability. SpaceX did not land a Falcon 9 rocket for another two years and did not relaunch the first stage until 2017. The strategy will face significant challenges in the coming years as it competes for commercial launch contracts.
This is not to say that the H3 rocket will be obsolete as it will move to launch sites this week. But the world of launches has changed so much in the last decade that it could be one of the last major development projects in the world of fully expendable rockets.
