Japan Suspends Launch Of Rocket Carrying Moon Lander For Third Time: Report

The mission has already been postponed twice since last week because of bad weather.

New Delhi: Japan's space agency on Monday suspended a planned launch of a rocket carrying the country's first spacecraft to land on the moon less than 30 minutes before its scheduled take off because of unsuitable wind conditions in the upper atmosphere, reported news agency Reuters.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., which is responsible for building and launching the craft, said, "High-altitude winds hit our constraint for a launch... which had been set to ensure no impact from falling debris outside of pre-warned areas."

The exact date for the new launch has not been decided yet, but will be no sooner than Thursday because of necessary processes such as re-fuelling, MHI's launch unit chief Tatsuru Tokunaga said. MHI and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have said a launch could take place as late as September 15, according to Reuters.

The mission has already been postponed twice since last week because of bad weather. It was originally set to launch on Saturday morning, but the launch time was first pushed back to Sunday, and then Monday amid concerns about the weather.

As per the news agency, the rocket is carrying JAXA's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), which would be the first Japanese spacecraft to land on the moon. Tokyo-based startup ispace's (9348.T) Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander crashed on the lunar surface in April.

The rocket is also carrying an X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) satellite, a joint project of JAXA, NASA and the European Space Agency.

Following Monday's launch, JAXA was planning to start SLIM's landing from lunar orbit in January-February 2024, aiming to follow the success of the Chandrayaan-3 moon exploration project, which successfully soft-landed on the moon's south pole last week, reported Reuters.

H-IIA, co-developed by JAXA and MHI, has been Japan's flagship space launch vehicle since 2001, with 45 successful launches in 46 attempts. However, following the failure of JAXA's new medium-lift H3 rocket on its debut in March, the agency postponed the launch of H-IIA No. 47 for several months to investigate the cause.