Japan’s H3 rocket successfully launched an Earth observation satellite Sunday on its third flight.

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The launch industry is negotiating a transition into new families of launch vehicles, working to bring additional capacity into the market while seeking out competitive advantages against a growing number of competitors.

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Japan’s H3 rocket successfully reached orbit on its second launch Feb. 16, nearly a year after its inaugural launch failed.

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Japan launched a new optical reconnaissance satellite late Thursday to boost the country’s remote sensing capabilities.

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The launch of a Japanese mission to collect samples from the Martian moon Phobos and return them to Earth, previously scheduled for later this year, has slipped to 2026.

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The Japanese space agency JAXA has set a mid-February date for the return to flight of the H3 rocket, nearly a year after the vehicle’s first launch failed.

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The three companies with multibillion-dollar contracts to launch Amazons’s Project Kuiper constellation say they are committed to deploying those satellites on schedule despite delays in the development of their vehicles.

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The failure of Japan’s H3 rocket on its inaugural flight in March could delay several science missions, including two scheduled to launch on another rocket.

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Japan’s brand-new H3 rocket was destroyed on its March 7 inaugural flight after the vehicle’s second-stage engine failed to ignite.

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Japan’s space agency JAXA aborted the long-awaited first launch of H3 rocket Feb. 16, when the rocket’s side boosters failed to ignite after main engine start.

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Several new launch vehicles, some years behind their original schedules, are now expected to make their inaugural launches within the next year.

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After spending most of 2020 and all of 2021 struggling with the H3 rocket’s main engine, JAXA says H-2A’s successor will not be ready to launch by the end of March as previously hoped.

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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is transporting its new, flexible H3 rocket to Tanegashima Space center for testing ahead of a first launch.

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The first launches of the new Japanese H3 launch vehicle are being delayed by issues with two components of the rocket’s main engine.

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The Japanese space agency JAXA announced Sept. 11 that the first launch of the country’s new H3 rocket will be delayed to no earlier than the spring of 2021 because of problems with the rocket’s main engine.

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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries still expects to conduct the maiden flight of Japan’s H3 rocket this year, notwithstanding the coronavirus pandemic. 

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As Japan prepares to join NASA’s Artemis lunar program, the country’s largest rocket manufacturer says it could upgrade the H3 rocket debuting next year to deliver cargo to the moon as soon as 2025. 

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Seeking to double the number of launches it can conduct annually, Japan will add a second launch pad to the Tanegashima spaceport to support its next-generation H3 rocket.

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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the prime contractor for Japan’s next-generation launch vehicle, the H3, says it is on schedule for a first launch in 2020, and will soon learn if the cost-cutting efforts pursued over the past three years will meet the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s goal of halving launch prices compared to the H-2A.

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A Japanese H-2A rocket launched the Himawari-9 geostationary weather satellite Tuesday, marking the workhorse rocket’s second and final launch of 2016.

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