To the moo-n: cow dung fuels Japan's space ambitions

A machine collecting cow manure at a dairy farm in Taiki of Hokkaido Prefecture. - AFP

TAIKI, Japan: Japan's space industry opened potentially an udder-ly new chapter on Thursday (Dec 7) with a start-up testing a prototype rocket engine that runs on fuel derived purely from a plentiful local source: cow dung.

The experiment saw the engine blast out a blue-and-orange flame 10-15 metres (30-50 feet) horizontally out of an open hangar door for around 10 seconds in the rural northern town of Taiki.