Posted: Mon, Feb 18, 2002, 9:25 AM ET (1425 GMT)
Faulty wiring prevented a Japanese spacecraft from separating from its H-2A booster during a launch earlier this month, according to a Japanese newspaper article published Sunday. The Daily Yomiuri reported that an incorrectly-wired connector in the Demonstrator of Atmospheric Reentry System with Hyper Velocity (DASH) spacecraft prevented a deployment signal from being transmitted from the rocket to the spacecraft. That wiring problem was traced back to a copying error in blueprints; the problem was not found in ground tests since those tests were based on the faulty blueprints. The DASH spacecraft separation failure was the only problem with the February 4 launch of the H-2A on its second flight. Before the report there were concerns that the deployment failure could be a flaw with the rocket, but an official with the Japanese space agency ISAS said the booster was not at fault for the failure. DASH was intended to reenter the Earth's atmosphere to test high-speed reentry technologies. It was built by NEC-Toshiba Space Systems at a cost if 600 million yen (US$4.5 million).
