Reuters: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
TOKYO, March 13 – Kairos, a small, solid-fuel rocket made by Japan’s Space One, exploded just seconds into its inaugural launch on Wednesday as the firm tried to become the first Japanese company to put a satellite in orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The setback for Space One and the rocket industry in Japan comes as the government and investors ramp up support for the sector amid a national security buildup<\/a> and skyrocketing demand<\/a> for commercial satellites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 18-metre (59 ft) rocket exploded five seconds after lifting off, leaving behind a large cloud of smoke, a fire, fragments of the rocket and sprays of firefighting water near the launch pad on the tip of mountainous Kii peninsula in western Japan, visible on local media livestreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The rocket terminated the flight after judging that the achievement of its mission would be difficult,” company president Masakazu Toyoda said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Space One did not specify what triggered self-destruction after the first-stage engine ignited – or when the company would launch the next Kairos – only pledging an investigation into the explosion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company said that the launch is highly automated, requiring only about a dozen ground staff, and that the rocket self-destructs when it detects errors in its flight path, speed or control system that could cause a crash that endangers people on the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reuters: TOKYO, March 13 – Kairos, a small, solid-fuel rocket made by Japan’s Space One, exploded just seconds into its inaugural launch on Wednesday as the firm tried to become the first Japanese company to put a satellite in orbit. The setback for Space One and the rocket industry in Japan comes as the government and investors ramp up support for the sector amid a national security buildup and skyrocketing demand for commercial satellites. The 18-metre (59 ft) rocket exploded five seconds after lifting off, leaving behind a large cloud of smoke, a fire, fragments of the rocket and sprays… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38085,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38083\/revisions\/38085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}