Well, this Japanese private rocket launch certainly could have gone better

Saturday's test of the MOMO-2 rocket, which was to be the first Japanese rocket financed by private funds to reach the space, s & # 39; is very badly spent for Takafumi Horie of Interstellar Technologies, a securities fraudster convicted by a profile of Financial Times dubbed "the enfant terrible of Japan". The sequence of the event showed that the quarter-turn rocket failed a few seconds after leaving the firing point

According to Agence France-Presse, no injuries occurred. was reported during the incident because all launch personnel were within 600 meters of a secure launching center. a major setback for Horie and Interstellar:

Interstellar Technologies, founded by Takafumi Horie, the creator of Livedoor, launched the unmanned rocket, MOMO-2, at around 5:30 am (203 0 GMT Friday) from A test site at Taiki, in southern Hokkaido

But television footage showed that the 10-meter (33-foot) rocket fell back onto the launch pad a few seconds after take-off.

The launch was to send the rocket carrying observation equipment at an altitude of more than 100 kilometers (62 miles).

No satellite was on board for launch.

Photos posted on Interstellar's Facebook page showed the rocket charred and in pieces, although the company wrote that there was no significant damage to the launch facilities.

The first MOMO rocket failed in July 2017, Yomiuri Shimbun reported. The engineers lost contact with the craft in the air, although it was estimated to have reached a height of about 20 kilometers.

"We have never seen a failure like this," Horie told reporters on . Asahi Shimbun . "We are thinking about what we can do to maintain a connection with the next step, even if the future remains barely visible." Takahiro Inagawa, president of Interstellar, added that the current indications were that the rocket was suffering from an engine problem

. Inagawa added that "we could not do what we were supposed to do. I'm sorry for that, "but" I think I would like to continue to give a shot, "the South China Morning Post wrote

According to Engadget, while the two failures Interstellar 's were highly publicized, the failed launch of 2017 cost only $ 440,000, compared with an average of $ 1.8 to $ 2.7 million for the Japanese agency. Aerospace Exploration One of the ways that Interstellar has tried to bring down the price of its launches has been to use "readily available" electronic components, the Asahi Shimbun has written, but without a successful test, no saving of costs remains theoretical

[AFP]