A major fire broke out on Tuesday at a Japanese space agency site while it was testing a solid-fuel Epsilon S rocket, according to images from NHK television. No injuries were reported.
The incident occurred in the remote Kagoshima prefecture in southern Japan. Fireballs and white smoke rose around 8:30 a.m. from the Tanegashima space center, according to these images.
‘There was an anomaly during today’s combustion test. We are trying to establish what happened,’ the Japanese space agency (JAXA) said in a statement. ‘The causes [de l’incident] are also under investigation.
According to NHK, the fire occurred during a test burn, attended by media stationed about 600 meters away. About 30 seconds into the test, a loud explosion was heard and what appeared to be a burning object flew toward the sea, NHK reported.
Several failures
Japan’s Sankei newspaper reported that orange flames burst from the rocket’s engine placed on a horizontal platform before the explosion.
JAXA has suffered several setbacks in recent years in its rocket programs. In 2022, an agency probe, Omotenashi, on board the American Artemis 1 mission, experienced a fatal battery failure shortly after its ejection into space.
In July 2023, an Epsilon S rocket exploded during a test, approximately 50 seconds after ignition. But last February, the agency managed to launch the H3, its new flagship rocket which was presented as a rival to the Falcon 9 from the private American space agency SpaceX.
This achievement followed the successful moon landing in January of an unmanned probe, making Japan the fifth country to achieve such a feat.
/ATS
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