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Satnews Daily
July 31st, 2017

Rocket Momo is a No Go ... First Rocket Built by Private Japanese Company



Image from Interstellar Technologies

The first private Japanese company attempted to launch their first rocket but what happened?

On Sunday Japanese Interstellar Technologies Inc. company launched the rocket called "Momo" from a launching pad in the country's Hokkaido island. The rocket was the first one to be launched not by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), but by a private company. 

Just one minute after the launch the plug was pulled and the mission aborted as the rocket fell into the Pacific Ocean.  Many attempts have been made to launch Momo but has been postponed due to both bad weather and technical conditions.

Interstellar Technologies is undaunted and will make a new attempt to succeed at becoming Japan's first private company to develop a rocket which they said will be achieved before the end of 2017, according to Takahiro Inagawa, the company's CEO.

"Before the contact has been lost, we have succeeded to obtain the information about the flight, that's why we are very satisfied with the result. We will analyze all the weak points and fix them and will try to carry out a new launch before the end of the year," Inagawa said, as quoted by the Kyodo news agency.