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This weekend Japan tried to launch a 3kg cubesat into orbit aboard its multi-stage, SS-520 rocket. Were it to have succeeded, the SS-520 would have become the smallest rocket to ever deliver a payload into orbit. Alas, the rocket did not make it.
According to the Japanese Exploration Agency, or JAXA, the sounding rocket launched on Sunday morning from the Uchinoura Space Center on the country's southernmost main island, Kyushu. Although the first stage fired normally, a preplanned check between first-stage separation and the second ignition did not show consistent telemetry data. This prevented the firing of the second stage, and the rocket fell into the Pacific Ocean, southeast of the spaceport.
Measuring 9.65 meters tall, the SS-520 rocket had a diameter of just 0.52 meters and weighed a total of 2.6 tons. It was hoped that, with further development, the SS-520 rocket could ultimately lift a payload of 140kg up to 800 km above the Earth's surface.
That's not much bigger than many of the hobbyist rockets in use today.
Source: Ars Technica
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 18 2017, @04:03PM
The 70s era fun was obviously to work around the ABM treaty that the USA and USSR sorta pretended to follow while ignoring. Eventually we tossed the ABM treaty around the turn of this century. Nobody really seemed to care about ABM treaty violations, but people were very happy to signal we had a treaty. Its just a weird era in politics, "hey guize here's this treaty nobody follows yo peace out"
The Israelis Arrow3 is a non-classified public admitted program of joint cooperation basically what I'm accusing the Japanese and USA of cooperating on. I mean, heck, its got a wikipedia page explaining it and everything, not even conspiracy theory or whatever. The Israeli Arrow program has always been a USA/Boeing "thing" siince the 1980s never involved S.A. AFAIK. Of course its a big world and someone in S.A. might have tried to sell something totally different to Israel or who knows.
AFAIK in public SS-520 is pure blood Japanese JAXA/IHI as primary contractors but I suspect there's lots of "help" from unspecified sources and I think the USA is one.
Everyone's kinda doing about the same thing roughly in ASAT. ASAT today is kinda like tanks in 1920 or so, everyone kinda knows they want them and they kinda have a hazy idea but the details are ... highly variable. The next big war will see the generals and admirals prepared for the last big war but it'll actually be fought with ASAT and drones and stuff.