The maiden launch of JAXA’s Epsilon rocket was postponed due to a last-minute glitch on August 27. The launch from the Uchinoura Space Center in southern Japan was aborted 19 seconds before the liftoff.

“An automatic stop alarm was issued as an attitude abnormality was detected approximately 19 seconds prior to the liftoff time during the automatic countdown sequence,” reported a JAXA press release. The cause of the abort alarm is now under investigation and JAXA president Naoki Okumura said he could not say how soon the launch could be rescheduled.

“Finding the cause is our first and foremost task,” said Okamura. “We must examine what happened today, and our next launch depends on what we find out.”

The Epsilon is Japan’s first new rocket design since the H2A, introduced in 2001, and it costs $32 million, one-third the cost of H2A. The 24-meter tall Epsilon is a three-stage solid propelled rocket, using such minimal and efficient computer technology that only a laptop is needed to perform the monitoring.

“If we hope to make the access to space much easier, more sophisticated factors are required,” said Epsilon project manager Yasuhiro Morita. “We are trying to make rocket launches much simpler and ordinary events.”

Epsilon-1 was due to carry in orbit Sprint-A, the first space telescope dedicated exclusivity to the observation of the solar system’s planets.

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Matteo Emanuelli

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Matteo Emanuelli is Feature Editor of Space Safety Magazine. He is a young professional from Italy but living in France where he works as engineer and project manager at Université de Picardie. He is member of the Space Generation Advisory Council where he is Co-Lead of the Space Safety Sustainability Project Group. Matteo also worked on a space debris removal mission at the Omsk State Technical University in Russia while he was enrolled at Politecnico di Milano.

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