The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science confirmed Tuesday that Japan's second successfully launched H-IIA rocket failed to release one of two experimental devices that it was scheduled to put into orbit Monday.
Officials at ISAS's Kagoshima Space Center worked around the clock without success to separate the Demonstrator of Atmospheric Re-entry System with Hyper Velocity (DASH) from a satellite cover and put it into orbit as planned. They said the failure may have been caused by the satellite itself or the rocket.
The 57-meter-long rocket blasted off at 11:45 a.m. Monday from the National Space Development Agency of Japan's Tanegashima Space Center and successfully released the Mission Demonstration Satellite-1 (MDS-1) into orbit.
ISAS, part of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, which developed the satellite, announced the separation failure Monday night. It concluded the DASH unit was still attached to the satellite cover after analyzing radio waves from the rocket received at a ground station in Chile.