ASTRO-E

ASTRO-E was lost when the M-V rocket failed on its fourth flight. About 40 seconds in, ceramic heat-shield material broke away from the first-stage nozzle, the engine lost thrust vectoring, and the vehicle could not reach orbit. The casualty was a joint Japanese-NASA X-ray observatory built to study black holes and other high-energy sources; a rebuild, Suzaku, finally reached orbit in 2005.