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September 06, 2025
 

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ROCKETS

A SpaceX Starship spacecraft sits atop a super heavy booster at its launch pad before a scheduled 10th test flight was postponed at the company's complex in Starbase, Texas, on Sunday.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 25, 2025
SpaceX postpones Starship test flight over ground system issue
Similar postponements in the past have been resolved in a matter of days.
Tomifumi Godai, an engineer who played a central role in the development of Japan's first domestically produced rockets, has died. He was 92.
JAPAN
Aug 20, 2025
Famed Japanese rocket engineer Tomifumi Godai dies at 92
Godai was known as the creator of the country's domestically produced H-2 and H-2A rockets.
The Firefly Aerospace mission operations center in Leander, Texas
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 18, 2025
Firefly Aerospace eyes Japan rocket launches for Asia market
The plan could make Japan the first launch site in Asia for Firefly, the Texas-based rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX.
BUSINESS
Jul 13, 2025
Taiwanese rocket fails to achieve Japan's first foreign launch
The rocket lifted off at 11:40 a.m., but within a minute its trajectory turned wobbly and it went into free fall.
Japan’s flagship H2A rocket lifts off for the final time early Sunday from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jun 29, 2025
Japan’s H2A rocket retired after successful final launch
The rocket’s 50th and final mission carried the GOSAT-GW, a government-developed hybrid environmental observation satellite.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Axiom-4 crew of four astronauts lifts off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on a mission to the International Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Wednesday.
WORLD
Jun 26, 2025
India, Poland and Hungary astronauts launch for first space station mission
The four-member crew was carried aloft on a towering SpaceX launch vehicle consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket.
Flames rise as a SpaceX rocket explodes in Brownsville, Texas, on Wednesday, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 20, 2025
SpaceX Starship rocket explodes in setback to Musk's Mars mission
The company attributed the explosion to a "major anomaly" and said all personnel were safe.
Honda's experimental reusable rocket during a launching and landing test
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 18, 2025
Honda hails successful test of reusable rocket
Japan's second-biggest carmaker has successfully tested an experimental reusable rocket as it seeks to expand into the space sector.
SpaceX's next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its Super Heavy booster is launched on its ninth test at the company's launch pad in Starbase, Texas, on Tuesday.
BUSINESS / Tech
May 28, 2025
SpaceX's Starship spins out of control
SpaceX's Starship rocket roared into space from Texas on Tuesday but spun out of control about halfway through its flight without achieving some of its most important testing goals, bringing fresh engineering hurdles to CEO Elon Musk's increasingly turbulent Mars rocket program.
Innovative Space Carrier CEO Kojiro Hatada poses with a model of the planned spaceplane ASCA 3 at JFE Engineering’s factory in Yokohama on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 28, 2025
Japanese reusable rocket startup ISC eyes U.S. test launch in December
Innovative Space Carrier said its ASCA 1.0 reusable launcher will conduct a 100-meter flight and landing test.
The 50th two-stage H-2A rocket is stored at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Tobishima plant in Aichi Prefecture.
JAPAN
Apr 24, 2025
Final H-IIA rocket to be launched in June
After the launch, the H-IIA rocket series will be retired and replaced by the more advanced H3 series.
Under the Economic Security Promotion Act, the government implements a range of measures to secure vital supply chains, from providing subsidies and low-interest loans to coordinating regulations, stockpiling essential goods and protecting advanced technologies.
BUSINESS / Economy
Apr 16, 2025
METI may list undersea cables and satellites as critical for economic security
The move comes amid an increasingly uncertain geo-economic climate, with global powers becoming more protectionist.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket is launched at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Monday.
BUSINESS / Tech
Apr 1, 2025
SpaceX eyes Starlink hub with multiple ground stations in Vietnam, sources say
The move would herald its launch in the country and would help authorities police internet traffic.
A model of the Isar Aerospace mini-rocket
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 30, 2025
German startup's space rocket explodes after takeoff from Norway
The uncrewed Spectrum rocket was billed as the first attempt at an orbital flight to originate from Europe, where several nations have said they want a share of a growing market.
The Crew Dragon capsule containing Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams and two other astronauts descends by parachute before their splashdown off the coast of Florida, on March 18 in a still image from video.
WORLD
Mar 19, 2025
NASA astronauts 'Butch and Suni' return to Earth after drawn-out mission in space
Their return ends a mission fraught with uncertainty and technical troubles that turned into a global spectacle.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft launches from NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov onboard, on Friday.
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 17, 2025
Stranded U.S. astronauts to return to Earth on Tuesday
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been on the ISS since June after the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth.
SpaceX's next-generation Starship spacecraft atop it's super heavy booster is launched on its eighth test at the company's Boca Chica launch pad in Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday.
WORLD
Mar 9, 2025
SpaceX scrubs launch of two NASA satellite missions
One rocket’s chief passenger was SPHEREx, a space telescope that will take images of the entire sky in more than a 100 colors that are invisible to the human eye.
Debris streaking through the sky after SpaceX's Starship spacecraft tumbled and exploded in space, in Big Sampson Kay, The Bahamas, Thursday, in this screen grab obtained from a social media video.
BUSINESS
Mar 7, 2025
SpaceX's Starship explodes in space and rains debris over Caribbean
The failure of the eighth Starship test comes just over a month after the seventh also ended in an explosion.
Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of Ispace, speaks during a news conference in September 2024.
JAPAN
Mar 4, 2025
Japan startup targets June 6 moon landing
Ispace hopes to have its own moment of glory, after the unsalvageable "hard landing" of its initial attempt in 2023.
This still image taken from a Feb. 24 video released by Firefly Aerospace shows Firefly's Blue Ghost lander on its third lunar orbit, showing the far side of the moon.
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 2, 2025
In first, private U.S. spaceship lands upright on moon
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 touched down shortly after 3:34 am U.S. Eastern Time on the moon's northeastern near side.
Bangladesh is a South Asian time bomb
Many Bangladeshis hoped that the overthrow of long-time leader Sheikh Hasina last year would revitalize the country’s democracy after an authoritarian lurch under the “iron lady.” Instead it has led to proliferating human-rights abuses, intensifying repression and widespread Islamist violence.
‘Confugenics’ and East Asia's demographic crisis
East Asia’s fertility plunge is driven not just by financial costs but by perfectionist cultural expectations that burden parents with intense educational and social demands.
Tropical Storm Peipah brings heavy rain to parts of western Japan
Tropical Storm Peipah made landfall in western Japan on Friday, prompting the Japan Meteorological Agency to issue warnings of landslides and other disasters due to heavy rainfall in several areas.
Trump signs order reducing tariffs on Japanese autos
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Ryosei Akazawa, Japan’s chief tariff negotiator, shake hands.
Tamagotchi hatches 100 million shipments worldwide thanks to ’90s nostalgia
The latest version of Tamagotchi, called Tamagotchi Paradise, is awarded the best digital toy at Tokyo Toy Show on Aug. 28.
London’s calling and sumo’s top division — along with Hello Kitty — are ready to answer
Yokozuna Hoshoryu and Hello Kitty, an ambassador for sumo's upcoming tour to London, at Tokyo's Kokugikan on Tuesday
Resonac creates 27-member consortium to pursue advanced chip developments
Representatives from member companies of JOINT3, a consortium working together on semiconductor-related developments announced by Resonac, pose for a photo in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Haru Nemuri’s radical new album refuses easy listening
Musician Haruna Kimishima, better known as Haru Nemuri, confronts Japan’s politics, nationalism and censorship on her recent output.
Overseas sluggers step up to bat in small-town Hokkaido
The Betsukai Pilot Spirits welcomed new players (left to right) Yuta Yamanaka, Roman Guthrie, Scott Bellina and Leo Jiminian this year, pictured here with Yassir Lachkar of the Ishikari Red Phoenix.
Xi — joined by Kim and Putin — delivers stark warning at military parade
Chinese leader Xi Jinping walks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of victory over Japan and the end of World War II, in Beijing on Wednesday.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past
By Alex K.T. Martin

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