Taiwanese private rocket company TiSpace terminated the flight of one of its rockets shortly after lift-off in northern Japan on Saturday, failing to become the first foreign company to perform a successful launch on Japanese soil.
TiSpace, through its Japanese unit jtSPACE, tried to reach outer space 100 kilometers above the Earth's surface on the inaugural flight of its 12-meter, hybrid-fuelled rocket VP01 in a launch from Japan's Hokkaido Spaceport.
The rocket lifted off at 11:40 a.m., but within a minute its trajectory turned wobbly and it went into free fall, footage from Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed.
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