Up to 1,000 people gathered at a public viewing site in Tokyo to see Epsilon – the nation’s first new rocket in 12 years – successfully blast-off into space from the Uchinoura Space Centre in Kagoshima in southwestern Japan.
Lift-off had originally been scheduled for August 27, but was aborted with just seconds to go following a computer glitch.
Epsilon – which is carrying a telescope to observe the solar system – was launched at half the production and launch costs of the previous M-5 rocket at 3.8bn yen (£24m) because of a new computer system that can perform its own checks and can be assembled quickly.
A much smaller crew was involved, compared with the 150 people needed when Japan previously launched its mainstream H2-A rocket.
Epsilon is half the size of the H2-A and a successor to the solid fuel M-5 rocket that was retired in 2006 due to its high cost.
Read more at Sky News.com.