MOMO-5, A ROCKET BY PRIVATE JAPANESE FIRM FAILS TO REACH SPACE, FACES MALFUNCTION

MOMO-5, A ROCKET BY PRIVATE JAPANESE FIRM FAILS TO REACH SPACE, FACES MALFUNCTION

A sounding rocket developed by a Japanese private launch company failed to reach space recently.

MOMO- 5 launched by Interstellar Technologies (IST) could not reach outer space, having faced some sort of a malfunction when it reached the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure before leaving the earth’s atmosphere.

This comes at a time when private companies are focusing on cutting the cost of reaching space by developing a new vehicle. Set up in 2003, IST had launched its first vehicle in 2017 which had not managed to reach space due to some technical error. Then two years later, another rocket called MOMO-3 was launched that surpassed the Karman line, an imaginary boundary at roughly a hundred kilometres above sea-level that is considered to mark the end of earth’s atmosphere and starting of the space. 

MOMO-5, a rocket by private Japanese firm fails to reach space, faces malfunction


The latest rocket venture of IST, MOMO-5 was launched at 8.15 pm UTC on Sunday or 13.45 am IST (Indian Standard Time) on Monday. The rocket was crowdfunded and lifted off a pad in Taiki Town, Hokkaido. The rocket showed some kind of a loss of control or anomaly soon after the lift-off. This forced IST to abort the mission which led to the sounding rocket’s crash in the Pacific Ocean.

Representatives of the startup said the mission had to be called off as the engine of the rocket had made an emergency stop at about 1 minute after liftoff. Primary calculations show that MOMO-5 had reached about 11 kilometres before crashing down.

Earlier, the fifth launch of MOMO was scheduled to take place in the month of January. IST had postponed it then citing trouble with its communication equipment. It had solved the issue by installing new parts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You may soon be able to ride to the edge of space from Alaska in a Balloon

Image
You may soon be able to ride to the edge of space from Alaska in a Balloon Florida-based startup firm Space Perspective plans to use the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak to serve as one of the launch sites for the vehicle, called the Spaceship Neptune A company wants to use an advanced balloon to fly customers from Earth’s surface in Alaska to the highest reaches of the planet’s atmosphere. Florida-based startup firm Space Perspective plans to use the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak to serve as one of the launch sites for the vehicle, called the Spaceship Neptune,  The Anchorage Daily News  reported on Sunday. The balloon rides will be manned by a flight crew taking eight passengers in a pressurized capsule suspended beneath a hydrogen balloon the size of a football stadium. Each passenger could pay an estimated $125,000 for a six-hour journey. Mark Lester, CEO of Alaska Aerospace Corp., said the high-altitude rides will be available from Kodiak in a few years and will support A
Read more

Committee recommends review of planetary protection policies

Image
Committee recommends review of planetary protection policies WASHINGTON — The NASA Advisory Council has recommended that NASA review its existing planetary protection guidelines to balance the needs of science and exploration, an effort that could set the stage for a similar revision at the international level. The council, during a two-day meeting at NASA Headquarters Dec. 10–11, adopted a recommendation calling on NASA to establish an interdisciplinary committee of experts to review the agency’s current requirements for preventing contamination of other worlds by NASA spacecraft as well as any contamination of the Earth by materials brought back from those worlds. “NASA should establish a multidisciplinary task force of experts from industry, the scientific community, and relevant government agencies, to develop U.S. policies that properly balance the legitimate need to protect against the harmful contamination of the Earth or other celestial bodies with the scientific, social, and e
Read more

NASA to use commercial launch vehicle for Europa Clipper

NASA to use commercial launch vehicle for Europa Clipper NASA to use commercial launch vehicle for Europa Clipper WASHINGTON — NASA is no longer considering launching the Europa Clipper mission on the Space Launch System, deciding instead to launch the spacecraft on a commercial rocket it will procure in the next year. During a Feb. 10 presentation at a meeting of NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG), leaders of the Europa Clipper project said the agency recently decided to consider only commercial launch vehicles for the mission, and no longer support a launch of the spacecraft on the SLS. “We now have clarity on the launch vehicle path and launch date,” Robert Pappalardo, project scientist for Europa Clipper at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. That clarity came in the form of a Jan. 25 memo from NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office to “immediately cease efforts to maintain SLS compatibility” and move forwa
Read more