The government will hand over the manufacturing technology of the nation's domestically developed main rocket, the H-IIA, to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. in October, official sources said Thursday.
An Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry task force charged with mapping out ways to privatize the H-IIA business came up with the plan in advance of the scheduled third H-IIA launch on Sept. 10, hoping to further nurture the nation's aerospace industry, they said.
The first H-IIA launch, last August, succeeded, but the second ended in failure.