Private company Interstellar Technologies failed to launch the MOMO-2 rocket, the first private space rocket in Japan. On Saturday, June 30 at about 5:30 am local time (Friday at 23:30 Moscow time), a rocket exploded at the test site in Taiki, South Hokkaido. On the television storyboard, you can see how a ten-meter 1.25-ton rocket went up about 20 meters, then vertically sank back onto the launch pad and caught fire. About 600 people came to the cosmodrome to observe the historic launch. There were many investors among them, because Interstellar Technologies was raising funds to launch a rocket using crowdfunding.

As a result of the incident no one was hurt. Also, no breakdowns of large structures at the cosmodrome were recorded. Viewers say the explosion was very beautiful.

Private company Interstellar Technologies was founded by Japanese entrepreneur Takafumi Horie, owner of the popular Internet provider Livedoor. As the agency Agence France-Presse writes , this “dissident” entrepreneur was previously convicted of fraud. As we see, this does not prevent him (successfully) from doing business and (so far unsuccessfully) launching rockets into space. But Japanese Ilon Musk does not give up.

The most interesting parts of the video broadcast, including footage of the launch and ignition of the rocket, are collected on this short video .


This is the second failure of the Japanese entrepreneur. The last unsuccessful launch occurred in July 2017 . Then the engineers lost contact with the rocket about a minute after launch. But they estimate that the rocket reached an altitude of about 20 kilometers.

MOMO-2 did not carry particularly valuable cargo, no expensive satellites. It was supposed to bring low-cost equipment to low Earth orbit purely for the purpose of the experiment: just check the fact of the equipment output and establish a connection with it.

Interstellar Technologies has announced that it will continue experiments after analyzing the latest failure. In the end, the first launches of SpaceX were also unsuccessful. Nobody promised that the rocket should fly into space from the very beginning: these first launches were initially practically programmed to fail. They are experimental and are used to collect data.

The AFP agency writes that the Japanese entrepreneur Takafumi Horiye “helped Japan move to the information economy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but later spent almost two years in prison for accounting fraud.” After his release, he founded Interstellar Technologies in 2013.

It seems that all “space businessmen” are characterized by adventurism to one degree or another.

So far in Japan, no private business can compete with the state space agency JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), but Interstellar Technologies claims to seriously contend with the state at the expense of lower cost. For example, last year's unsuccessful launch cost the company only $ 440,000 in losses, while JAXA spends on each launch from $ 1.8 million to $ 2.7 million. However, JAXA and the rocket are more powerful than prototypes of Interstellar Technologies with a diameter of 50 cm.

Interstellar Technologies says it intends to reduce the cost of rockets through the use of "commercial electronic components." However, while not a single rocket has reached its destination, all these economic calculations remain theoretical.

Here are some picturesque photos taken after the unsuccessful launch of MOMO-2.







All debris after the explosion carefully collected and grouped in a hangar. Here, experts will understand what went wrong.



Engineers at Interstellar Technologies say they have not yet encountered this kind of failure. Most likely the problem is in the engine.

Last flight of Block 4

Meanwhile, the US company SpaceX on the same day, June 29, 2018, carried out the last launch of the Falcon 9 rocket in the version of Block 4.



She raised the Dragon spacecraft, which will deliver 2.7 tons of cargo to the ISS.



Further launches will be carried out only in the version of Block 5 , which was successfully tested in May of this year.

Block 5 is specially optimized for multiple landing. It is assumed that the first stage of each rocket will be used at least ten times , and the time to prepare the stage for re-launch will be reduced from the current few months to several weeks. This will make it even cheaper to launch launches and will create a permanent source of income for SpaceX, and the company's engineers will be able to safely concentrate on the following task: developing the Big Falcon Rocket and flying to Mars.