How Japan’s space industry can regain thrust after H3 rocket failure

Japan’s latest rocket failure has triggered much soul-searching and resurrected a debate about whether the country’s space programme, long defined by caution and incremental progress, is equipped for a market that now rewards speed, repetition and a tolerance for failure.\nOn Monday, the domestically built H3 rocket, Japan’s new flagship launcher, failed, costing the country a satellite and drawing sharp criticism from the Japanese media.\nLocal media called the incident a “significant setback” to Japan’s space ambitions and warned that the programme “faces a long road” before it could regain the trust of foreign partners and customers seeking guarantees that their satellites would be deployed.\nWhile aerospace experts agree that the loss of the rocket and its payload will dent the reputation of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), they also caution against a rush to judgment.\n“Yes, this is a huge black eye for Jaxa and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which makes the engines for the H3, but this is just the nature of the space business,” said Lance Gatling, president of Nexial Research.\n\n“Part of the problem in Japan is that they have not failed enough. Development here is very long because they want perfection. Whenever something goes wrong in the process, it takes a long time to figure out what needs to change and the design engineers, laboratory technicians and everyone else are standing around waiting for someone else,” the aerospace and defence analyst said.\n“But even after all the simulations, they still have to launch these things and really test them. And of course, some are going to fail.”\nThat counts for little in the cutthroat – and astronomically expensive – business of putting communications or military-use satellites into orbit.\n“The H3 was meant to be Japan’s answer to SpaceX,” he said, referring to the Elon Musk-founded company. “The H3 is not reusable, like SpaceX’s Starship, but it has been developed to be easy to assemble, inexpensive, easy to integrate and highly reliable.”\nUnfortunately for the Japanese rocket, though, SpaceX craft have the edge. They are designed to be reused between 50 and 100 times, have already delivered numerous payloads and are cheaper than the H3. Plus, after the inevitable teething problems, they are proven.\n\n\n“SpaceX is doing rocket after rocket and it is astonishing what they are doing,” Gatling told This Week in Asia. “They have removed 90 per cent of all the hardware and internal plumbing of these rockets and they have launched, they have failed, they have figured out the problem and then they have gone again very quickly.”\nJaxa has a more cautious design philosophy.\nThe development of the H3, successor to the H-IIA and H-IIB rockets, started in 2013, with the first launch taking place only 10 years later. That launch failed when the second-stage engine failed to ignite, although the five subsequent flights did operate according to plan.\n‘Two steps back’\nJaxa has not confirmed the cause of the failure of the most recent launch, although it is believed to have been the result of the second-stage engine shutting down earlier than planned, resulting in a loss of thrust. The pressure in the hydrogen fuel tank also fell, so the agency is trying to see if both events are linked.\nIn an editorial, the Asahi newspaper bemoaned the loss of the rocket and the Michibiki No 5 satellite, part of the global positioning system that Japan is developing.\n“The reliability of [Japan’s] space exploration capabilities will be called into question,” the editorial said.\n\nA launch success rate of 95 per cent was the benchmark for reliability, it said, but the H3 was operating at around 70 per cent.\n“The road to recovery is a long one. Japan now finds itself in the serious position of not being able to launch any satellites,” it said, adding that the technological problems needed to be identified and personnel and funds committed to the project.\nJapan’s space development was in a “critical situation”, another editorial in the Yomiuri said. “Amid a global surge in rocket launches, Japan’s international competitiveness in this area will unavoidably decline.”\nAccording to a Cabinet Office report, there were 253 successful rocket launches around the world in 2024, nearly triple the 85 in 2015. The US was the most prolific, with 153 launches, of which 90 per cent were conducted by SpaceX, with China in second place with 66. Japan launched just five rockets last year.\nHowever, Kazuto Suzuki, a professor of science and technology policy at Tokyo University, was more upbeat about the long-term prospects of Japan’s space programme.\nMusk makes it seem easy, but that is not the reality\nKazuto Suzuki, a professor at Tokyo University\n“Everything in rocket technology is difficult. Musk makes it seem easy, but that is not the reality,” he said.\n“Yes, this is two steps back in the competitive market of launch services because trust is the key to success in the commercial market. So now Jaxa has to start rebuilding trust, to build reliability.”\nThough damaging to Jaxa’s reputation, “to a certain extent this sort of failure is acceptable”.\n“Most early launches of a new vehicle fail and it is only when a rocket gets to its 30th launch that partners who want you to put their satellite into orbit require guarantees,” he said.\n“In this business, it is better to fail early and that failure is all part of the process.”\n