One of China’s most promising space startups, Space Pioneer, experienced a major anomaly last weekend while testing the first stage of its Tianlong-3 rocket near the city of Gongyi.
The rocket was undergoing a inert fire test stage, in which the vehicle is attached to a test stand and its engines are fired while the lift stage has separated. According to the company’s statementthe rocket was not properly secured and was launched from the test stand “due to a structural failure.”
Footage of the accidental launch shows the rocket rising several hundred meters before exploding on a mountain 1.5 kilometers from the test site. (Watch different angles of the accident hereon the social networking site X, or on Weibo.) Space Pioneer’s statement sought to downplay the incident, saying that safety measures had been implemented before the test and that there were no casualties as a result of the accident. “The test site is located far from the Gongyi urban area,” the company said.
That’s not entirely true. Gongyi, located in eastern China’s Henan Province along the Yellow River, has a population of about 800,000. The test site is just about 5 kilometers from the city center and less than a kilometer from a smaller village.
Such accidents are scarce in the launch industry, but not unprecedented. Typically, during a inert fire test, the mass of the fuel on board the vehicle, combined with the sturdy clamps, hold the rocket in place. But in 1952, an American Viking rocket broke loose from its moorings at White Sands Missile Range in Modern Mexico. It crashed 6 kilometers from the launch site without any casualties.
How massive of a failure is this?
It’s unclear how massive a setback this will be for Space Pioneer, a quasi-private company founded in 2019. A little over a year ago, Space Pioneer became the first Chinese company to reach orbit with a liquid-fueled rocket, impressively during the first test of its petite Tianlong-2 rocket. It was a remarkable feat, but the rocket’s engines were supplied by a Chinese state-owned company, the Academy of Aerospace Liquid Propulsion Technology, not a private company.
For the larger Tianlong-3 rocket, Space Pioneer says it is producing its own kerosene-fueled engines, known as TH-12s. (They appear to have performed as expected this weekend.) Nine of those engines will propel the Tianlong-3 rocket, which is expected to have 17 tons of thrust, into low Earth orbit. The rocket’s design and planned reusability of its first stage mimic the Falcon 9 rocket developed by the American company SpaceX.
Space Pioneer was preparing the vehicle for its debut launch tardy this summer or fall — and the first-stage static-fire tests indicate the rocket’s final phase of testing before launch. The company’s statement did not set a recent timeline for the launch attempt, but said it would complete the failure analysis “as soon as possible.”
China has the world’s most animated commercial space industry after the United States. Almost a decade ago, the country’s leadership pledged to share state technology with companies that have raised private funds, seeking to emulate the commercial success of SpaceX and other American companies.
Dozens of Chinese companies are now developing rockets, satellites and other spaceflight products. Space Pioneer is among the most promising, having raised more than $400 million since its founding five years ago.
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.