KAIROS — Japan
The first Japanese company to try to launch something is called Space One (which transliterates as スペースワン), and they seem to be a pretty small outfit. But they put together an orbital solid rocket and sent it — a step that a lot of big talkers never reach. It’s smaller than an Epsilon.
They call their rocket Kairos (カイロス), a Greek word which they’ve made into a tortured acronym. The Kairos-1 has three solid stages and a liquid topper for accurate orbits. Like a lot of small launch hopefuls, they aim to provide sun-synchronous orbits and not much else. Their launch pad, “Space Port Kii”, is on a coastal cliff near the end of a southward-pointing peninsula, much like Rocket Lab’s New Zealand complex.
They made their first launch attempt in March 2024. This promptly resulted in a vigorous firefighting effort to put out the blaze in nearby trees. But it did gain some altitude before it exploded. The second launch in December went better — they got through a lot of the first stage burn before it lost its steering and had to self-destruct. The third attempt went about as well as the second: about seventy seconds into flight something went pop.
Their stated ambitions are similar to those of Astra: they want to do big volume with “the world’s most frequent launch schedule”. I’d guess the chance of this happening is about as likely as a city bus in Portland being boarded by pirates and driven to Somalia.
Kairos-1: mass 23 t, diam 1.35 m, thrust unknown, imp unknown, solid fuel, payload 0.25 t (1.1%), cost unknown, record 0/0/3 through March 2026.
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