Japan on Wednesday postponed the launch of a next-generation rocket scheduled for February next year following a spectacular failure last month, officials said.
"We will put off the launch because we need more time to look into the factors behind the failure," said a spokeswoman for the National Space Development Agency (NASDA).
"Now we are considering launching the rocket in a period between April 2000 and March 2001," the spokeswoman said.
NASDA originally planned to launch a next-generation H-2-A rocket in February.
But on November 15, space authorities had to explode a 24-billion-yen (229-million-dollar) H-2 rocket and satellite when the rocket's main engine failed, pushing it off course after liftoff.
The explosion was the second successive failure in the costly H-2 rocket project after a 36-million-dollar satellite was lost in space despite a successful separation from the rocket in February 1998.
The last launch was the seventh blast-off since 1994 of the Japanese H-2 rocket, supposed to be a fully-Japanese built rival to the successful European Ariane-4.
