On January 23, 2026, a test took place at the Onjuku Rocket Test Site of Chiba Institute of Technology's Planetary Exploration Research Center, in Onjuku, Isumi District, Chiba Prefecture. It was a ground firing test combining a gas hybrid rocket with a thrust vector control (TVC) unit. According to the university, this had never been done successfully anywhere before.

The test was led by Professor Yutaka Wada of the Department of Space and Semiconductor Engineering and students from his lab. At 2.0 kN of thrust, equivalent to lifting roughly 200 kilograms, over a burn of 8.0 seconds, they moved the rocket motor laterally during combustion and deflected the thrust. The TVC unit carries two actuators.

Data from a six-axis load cell, which measures both magnitude and direction of force precisely, and video footage both confirmed the unit moved as planned: origin, then +Y, then +X, then back to origin. The lateral thrust history confirmed the deflection itself.

What Thrust Vector Control Is, and Why It Is Hard

A rocket heading for space does not simply fly straight. Wind and gravity act on it, and it has to change direction to reach a target orbit. Thrust vector control is the technique of adjusting the exhaust direction to steer the vehicle's attitude.

The everyday analogy: turn a garden hose nozzle and the water goes somewhere else. With a rocket, you are moving the engine itself, the thing venting gas at thousands of degrees, which puts the difficulty in an entirely different category.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Starship use TVC for the precise attitude control that lands them. What Chiba Tech has done is demonstrate the same basic principle first, on a completely different kind of rocket.

What Makes the Gas Hybrid Rocket Different

Chiba Tech is developing what it calls a gas hybrid rocket (GHR).

Start with the standard categories. Liquid rockets use liquid fuel and liquid oxidizer: controllable, structurally complex. Solid rockets use solids for both: simple, but once lit they cannot be stopped. Hybrid rockets sit in between, pairing solid fuel with a liquid or gas oxidizer. They are safer and cheaper.

The gas hybrid goes a step further. The fuel is gasified before it mixes with the oxidizer, so both meet in the gas phase. That raises combustion efficiency above a conventional hybrid.

This test used a direct injection GHR, a simplified structure. Simplicity feeds straight into lower cost and higher reliability.

The Hestia Project: From Balloon to Orbit

The test is part of Chiba Tech's Hestia project. The name stands for Hybrid rockEt thruSt and atTItude lAunch project, and the goal is to establish thrust vector control and in-flight throttling, then prove it in a flight test with a gas hybrid rocket.

The target is orbital insertion of small satellites via the rockoon method. Rockoon, from rocket plus balloon, means lifting a rocket to the stratosphere, roughly 20 to 25 kilometers up, then firing it in mid-air.

Why the balloon? Launch from the ground and the rocket has to punch through thick atmosphere, burning enormous energy fighting drag. At 25 kilometers, air density is about one-thirtieth of sea level. Drag collapses, and the rocket can be smaller and cheaper. Balloons themselves are cheap to build and maintain.

Thin air brings its own problem, though. Aerodynamic fins, which normal rockets use for attitude control, stop working well. That is exactly why you need TVC, which steers the exhaust directly. This test was a step toward solving that.

A Different Path from SpaceX and Rocket Lab

Today's launch market belongs overwhelmingly to SpaceX's Falcon 9, with Rocket Lab's Electron holding its ground in small satellites. Both launch from large ground facilities in the conventional way.

The rockoon philosophy is something else. No launch complex required; you can release from a ship at sea. The weakness is the weight a balloon can carry, which caps how big the rocket gets. But demand for small satellites has grown fast enough that a small rocket can now be a business.

AstroX, which pursues the rockoon method alongside Chiba Tech, took part in this test as a joint research partner. Founded in May 2022 in the Odaka district of Minamisoma, Fukushima, it counts Professor Wada as its board-level CTO. In August 2024 it flew kogitsune, a 1.8-meter micro hybrid rocket, to 300 meters. On November 9 that year, it attempted the 10-kilometer class with the 6.3-meter FOX No. 1 / C1-2 rocket and reached 7 kilometers. The engine was co-developed with Chiba Tech.

In May 2026, AstroX unveiled FOX2, a suborbital mission. It is a single-stage hybrid rocket derived from FOX1 and adapted for stratospheric ignition: 5 meters long, roughly 12 kN of thrust. The company aims to reach 100 kilometers within fiscal 2026 and has already signed a transport contract with Kochi University of Technology. The roadmap runs to orbital success in 2029 and commercialization in the 2030s. CEO Shobu Oda, for his part, puts the company at 20 to 30 percent of the way to commercial operation.

Companies abroad study rockoon too, Spain's B2Space among them, but combining a gas hybrid rocket with TVC is Chiba Tech's own.

What Comes Next

Chiba Tech says it will now work on the TVC unit's responsiveness and how faithfully the thrust follows commands. Making a ground-proven technology work in actual flight is the next milestone.

Besides AstroX, the test involved Sowa Engineering, which co-designed and built the TVC unit, along with Kuroiso Seisakusho, NOF Corporation, LifeTechRobotics, and P-Max as joint research and cooperating companies. Development runs on an industry-academia footing.

Demand for small satellite launches keeps climbing. Chiba Tech's combination of gas hybrid rocket, TVC, and rockoon could become one answer to it.

A technology that started in a university lab might change how we reach space. Japan's university-born space technology is moving into demonstration. How do universities and research institutions in your country take part in space development? We'd love to hear about it.

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