The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) hopes next year to begin full-scale development of its three-stage Advanced Solid Rocket (ASR), with a first launch to follow in 2012 or 2013.

To be built by IHI Aerospace, the ASR is Japan's proposed future launcher for medium scientific payloads. JAXA also is studying a further development that would cut costs partly by using a fuel that could be melted and formed into a solid engine at less than the boiling temperature of water. That follow-on rocket could be available for commercial use, according to ASR project leader Yasuhiro Morita.

Studies of the ASR began in 2007 and the agency has now completed its concept design, done the preliminary design review and is about halfway into more detailed development work.

The point of the project is to cut costs. The ASR would lift 1.2-ton satellites to low orbit, a third less than its predecessor M-V, at around a third of the cost per launch. At $80 million a shot, the M-V was enormously costly, partly because it was launched only seven times in nine years, the last in 2006. The agency says Japan's space scientific effort suffered from that high cost.

For the ASR, "the purpose is to significantly reduce the time and labor needed for ... assembly and checkout of the rocket and to make the associated ground support system and facilities as compact as possible," Morita says. The target cost is $30 million per launch.

The design would cut costs in several ways, beginning with the use of the SRB-A strap-on solid-rocket booster from the H-IIA and H-IIB heavy rockets as the ASR's first stage, which would offer the economies of a faster production run. The casings for the upper stages would be made more cheaply by curing their composite material at normal pressure rather than high pressure. Avionics from the H-IIA would also be used.

The second stage would be based on the third stage of the M-V. The ASR third stage would be adapted from the fourth stage of the M-V. Thrust will be increased a little for both of those upper stages.

Artist's concept of Advanced Solid Rocket: JAXA