H3 launch vehicle maiden flight failure (2023)
The maiden flight of Japan's H3 launch vehicle, destroyed by command on March 7, 2023 after its second stage failed to ignite, taking the ALOS-3 Earth observation satellite with it.
A new launch vehicle is first a set of subsystems qualified one by one, and its maiden flight is the only test in which all of them work together, in sequence and under real conditions. The H3, developed by Japan's space agency and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to replace the H-IIA, got through the most violent phase, first stage and solid boosters, without incident, then failed on a simple step: igniting the second stage engine. That pattern is typical of maiden flights, where the defect does not sit in the most heavily loaded part but in an electrical or software interface that ground testing did not reproduce exactly. For an underwriter, the episode is a reminder that a high value government payload can fly without commercial insurance, the government acting as its own insurer, and that the failure then weighs on the vehicle's whole manifest, since every customer has to wait for its return to flight.
Launched from Tanegashima on March 7, 2023, after a first attempt was scrubbed on February 17, H3 Test Flight 1 saw its LE-5B-3 second stage engine fail to ignite; Japan's space agency sent the destruct command at 10:51:50 a.m. Japan time, and the ALOS-3 Earth observation satellite was lost. The investigation pointed to an electrical overcurrent that cut both power supplies to the second stage, and the H3 reached orbit on its second flight, on February 17, 2024.
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