A fireball erupts during an engine test of an Epsilon S rocket at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture on Nov. 26. (Captured from JAXA’s live footage)
By Ryo Sasaki,
Published by The Asahi Shimbun, 26 November 2024
TANEGASHIMA, Kagoshima Prefecture--Japan’s space agency halted an engine combustion test of its flagship Epsilon S rocket here Nov. 26 after an apparent explosion.
Live footage from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency showed a huge fireball and smoke billowing from the Tanegashima Space Center.
The cause of the failure is unclear. No injuries were reported.
The test, a follow-up to one conducted last year that also ended with an explosion, got under way at 8:30 a.m.
In the footage, a loud ‘boom’ can be heard 49 seconds into the ground test, quickly followed by the fireball and billowing white smoke.
The Epsilon, a solid-fuel rocket developed by JAXA and IHI Aerospace Co., was first launched in 2013.
In 2022, the launch of an Epsilon-6 rocket ended in failure.
The demonstration model for the improved Epsilon S features an enhanced second-stage motor with propellant increased from 15 tons to 18 tons, which JAXA wanted to evaluate for its cobustion performance.
During a test in July last year, the motor of an Epsilon rocket exploded at the Noshiro Rocket Testing Center in Akita Prefecture, destroying the test facility.
The cause was traced to high temperatures that melted components, which in turn compromised the integrity of the motor and ignited the propellant.
Engineers thought they had solved the problem by insulating the components with a special material for the latest test, which was a prelude for a scheduled launch of an Epsilon rocket this fiscal year. But that now appears very unlikely.
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