NAGOYA, Japan (AP) _ Japan's troubled space program unveiled its biggest rocket Friday, a towering eight-engine craft seen as rejuvenating the country's bruised ambition to become a world leader in the aerospace business.
The newest H-2A rocket stands 188 feet, slightly taller than a simplified version launched for the first time in August. The agency hopes that its Jan. 31 test launch will end any notion that the flawless liftoff of its sister model was a fluke.
``The success of the first launch builds a little confidence, but that is not enough,'' says Yoichi Fujita, spokesman for the National Space Development Agency of Japan, or NASDA. ``Launching a rocket is very risky.''
The H-2A would be used commercially to launch satellites.
Japan scrapped an earlier series of rockets, the H-2, when one failed to get its payload into orbit and another had to be exploded by remote control so it wouldn't veer out of control.
At the Mitsubishi factory in the central city of Nagoya where the new black-and-orange rocket was laid out in a stadium-sized hangar, blue-suited engineers hustled Friday to make sure that doesn't happen again.
``From now until launch, we'll be double checking everything,'' said rocket scientist Atsushi Matsui, adding that technicians were on guard for any last minute glitch _ from microscopic welding fissures to dust in the engine valves.
Next month's space shot is a make-or-break moment for the $69 million H-2A rocket. It will be the second and final test flight before Japan embarks on 11 ``operational'' flights scheduled through 2005.
The first test launch came Aug. 28, when Japan watched in relief as a simplified version of the H-2A blasted off into a clear blue sky.
If January's H-2A launch is a similar success, it will move Japan closer to competing with the United States and Europe in the satellite launching business. It will also bolster confidence in a space program battered by bureaucratic wrangling, cost overruns and technical breakdowns.
But a successful launch won't be easy, and developing a viable commercial program is even more difficult.
For starters the latest H-2A has eight engines, not four like its predecessor. That makes it more complex and prone to glitches.
The January shot will also try to launch two probes at the same time _ a satellite experimenting on semiconductors and a probe that's to plunge to earth as re-entry research. The August mission's only cargo was a mirrored sphere used for tracking.
Another question is whether two test launches are enough.
The H-2 line had five successful launches in a row before the sixth misfired and the seventh ended in a fireball.
The space shuttle engines needed four test liftoffs, notes space analyst Joan Johnson-Freese, of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.
She said Japan may need as many as six successful back-to-back launches before it gets insurance coverage for commercial missions. Japan is expected to use it to launch mostly government satellites at first.
The H-2 can lift cargo of up to 4.5 tons, in line with Europe's Ariane rockets and the Delta rockets of the United States.
It will be test launched from NASDA's southern base, 443 miles from Nagoya. It will be moved there by ship
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