Taiwanese private rocket company TiSpace terminated the flight of one of its rockets shortly after lift-off in northern Japan on Saturday, failing to become the first foreign company to perform a successful launch on Japanese soil.

TiSpace, through its Japanese unit jtSPACE, tried to reach outer space 100 kilometers above the Earth¡¯s surface on the inaugural flight of its 12-meter, hybrid-fuelled rocket VP01 in a launch from Japan¡¯s Hokkaido Spaceport.

The rocket lifted off at 11:40 a.m., but within a minute its trajectory turned wobbly and it went into free fall, footage from Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed.

¡°We are examining the situation of the flight,¡± a spokesperson for Space Cotan, the Japanese company operating the Hokkaido Spaceport, said after the launch attempt.

The rocket did not carry a satellite, although Space Cotan has said its success would be a step toward building a satellite-launching vehicle.

TiSpace, led by a former Taiwan Space Agency official, has not had a successful spaceflight. It turned to Japan in search of a test site after failing to launch a rocket in Australia in 2022.

While local officials and businesses in Hokkaido welcomed the move as a milestone toward becoming an international space hub, some Japan space policy experts have worried about provoking China, which closely monitors Taiwan¡¯s advances in missile-related technologies.

In Japan, private rocketmakers are racing to gain entry to the commercial launch market dominated by Elon Musk¡¯s SpaceX and U.S. rivals including Rocket Lab. No privately developed Japanese rocket has achieved orbital satellite launch.

Interstellar Technologies, a Hokkaido-based startup now backed by Toyota, was in 2019 the first private rocket venture in Japan to reach space, although without a satellite payload.

Canon Electronics-backed Space One conducted two failed orbital launches last year. Carmaker Honda last month succeeded in a low-altitude test of its prototype reusable rocket in Hokkaido, pledging to achieve spaceflight by 2029.