<p class="title">A rocket developed by a maverick Japanese entrepreneur and convicted fraudster exploded shortly after liftoff on Saturday, in a major blow to his bid to send Japan's first privately backed rocket into space.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Interstellar Technologies, founded by popular internet service provider Livedoor's creator Takafumi Horie, launched the unmanned rocket, MOMO-2, at around 5:30 am (local time) from a test site in Taiki, southern Hokkaido.</p>.<p class="bodytext">But television footage showed the 10-metre rocket crashing back down to the launch pad seconds after liftoff and bursting into flames.</p>.<p class="bodytext">No injuries were reported in the spectacular explosion.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The launch was supposed to send the rocket carrying observational equipment to an altitude of over 100 kilometres.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The failure follows a previous setback in July last year, when engineers lost contact with a rocket about a minute after it launched.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Interstellar Technologies said it would continue its rocket development programme after analysing the latest failure.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The outlandish, Ferrari-driving Horie -- who helped drive Japan's shift to an information-based economy in the late 1990s and the early 2000s but later spent nearly two years in jail for accounting fraud -- founded Interstellar in 2013.</p>.<p class="bodytext">However, privately backed efforts to explore space from Japan have so far failed to compete with the government-run Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. </p>
<p class="title">A rocket developed by a maverick Japanese entrepreneur and convicted fraudster exploded shortly after liftoff on Saturday, in a major blow to his bid to send Japan's first privately backed rocket into space.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Interstellar Technologies, founded by popular internet service provider Livedoor's creator Takafumi Horie, launched the unmanned rocket, MOMO-2, at around 5:30 am (local time) from a test site in Taiki, southern Hokkaido.</p>.<p class="bodytext">But television footage showed the 10-metre rocket crashing back down to the launch pad seconds after liftoff and bursting into flames.</p>.<p class="bodytext">No injuries were reported in the spectacular explosion.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The launch was supposed to send the rocket carrying observational equipment to an altitude of over 100 kilometres.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The failure follows a previous setback in July last year, when engineers lost contact with a rocket about a minute after it launched.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Interstellar Technologies said it would continue its rocket development programme after analysing the latest failure.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The outlandish, Ferrari-driving Horie -- who helped drive Japan's shift to an information-based economy in the late 1990s and the early 2000s but later spent nearly two years in jail for accounting fraud -- founded Interstellar in 2013.</p>.<p class="bodytext">However, privately backed efforts to explore space from Japan have so far failed to compete with the government-run Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. </p>