H3 reaches orbit on second launch

WASHINGTON– Japan’s H3 rocket effectively reached orbit on its 2nd launch Feb. 16, almost a year after its inaugural launch stopped working.

The H3 rocket took off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 7:22 p.m. Eastern after a two-day hold-up brought on by weather condition. There were no problems reported throughout the countdown, with liftoff happening at the start of a window lasting more than 2 and a half hours.

A bottom line in the launch was the separation of the upper phase and ignition of its LE-5B-3 engine. On the car’s inaugural launch in March 2023, that engine stopped working to sparkrequiring controllers to provide a destruct command to ruin the phase and its payload, the ALOS-3 Earth observation satellite.

On this launch, designated H3 Test Flight 2 (H3TF2) by the Japanese area firm JAXA, the engine did fire up. The phase reached an initial orbit of about 674 kilometers 16 and a half minutes after liftoff, and minutes later on released among its payloads, the CE-SAT-1E imaging satellite constructed by Canon Electronics. It was set up to be followed about 9 minutes later on by the other secondary payload, a cubesat called TIRSAT.

A 2nd burn of the upper phase was prepared one hour and 47 minutes after liftoff, lasting 26 seconds. After that, the upper phase would release its main payload, a mass simulator called Vehicle Evaluation Payload (VEP) 4. VEP-4 is a metal column with the very same mass and center of mass as ALOS-3. JAXA flew the inert payload after criticism about flying ALOS-3, a $200 million satellite, on the rocket’s very first launch.

JAXA and the automobile’s prime professional, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, invested months examining the inaugural launch failure. Engineers concluded that while the rocket got the signal to fire up the engine, an electrical failure avoided the ignition system from launching.

While the examination did not determine a single source, it did discover 3 circumstances that more than likely discussed what took place: a short-circuit in electrical wiring in the ignition system, an unsuccessful transistor in the ignition system and a failure in one computer system in the phase’s control system that sent out electrical existing to a redundant computer system that triggered it to stop working. JAXA made modifications to avoid any of those situations from persisting.

The possible issues with the ignition system likewise impacted the older H-2A rocket, which utilizes a variation of the very same upper-stage engine. That grounded the H-2A for half a year, with the rocket going back to flight in September.

The H3 is essential to Japan’s future area strategies. The rocket will prosper the H-2A and launch civil and military objectives, consisting of the brand-new HTV-X spacecraft that will transfer freight to the International Space Station. The H3 is likewise created to run at far lower expenses than the H-2A, making the automobile more competitive in the industrial launch market.