Mitsubishi Heavy Industries mulls upgraded H3 rocket variants for lunar missions
WASHINGTON —
As Japan prepares to join NASA’s Artemis lunar program,
the country’s largest rocket manufacturer
says it could upgrade the H3 rocket debuting next year to deliver cargo to the moon as soon as 2025.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ deputy manager of space systems design, Shoyo Hyodo,
said Oct. 25 that the successor to Japan’s H-2A and H-2B rockets remains on track for a 2020 maiden launch.
MHI
is developing the H3 to be less expensive than its current launchers, in order to capture a bigger slice of the global launch market for commercial satellites while also meeting Japan’s military and civil launch needs.
H3
is slated to launch HTV-X, an upgraded cargo vessel, to the International Space Station in 2021,
Hyodo
said during a presentation at the 70th International Astronautical Congress here. To support NASA’s future lunar gateway,
MHI is contemplating two variants of the H3 that could reach more difficult orbits, he said.
SpaceNews.com