One of China’s most promising space companies, Space Pioneer, experienced a serious anomaly last weekend while testing the first stage of its Tianlong-3 rocket near the city of Gongyi.
The rocket was undergoing a static-fire test of the stage, in which a vehicle is attached to a test stand while its engines ignite, when the booster broke off. According to a statement from the companyThe rocket was not sufficiently secured and was detached from the test stand “due to a structural failure.”
Video of the accidental ascent showed the rocket soaring several hundred meters into the sky before explosively crashing into a mountain 1.5 kilometers from the test site. (See Various angles of the accident hereon social networking site X, or on Weibo.) Space Pioneer’s statement sought to downplay the incident, saying it had implemented safety measures before the test and that there were no casualties as a result of the accident. “The test site is far from the urban area of Gongyi,” the company said.
This is not entirely true. Gongyi, located in Henan Province in eastern China on the banks of the Yellow River, has a population of about 800,000 people. The test bed is only about 5 kilometers from the city center and less than a kilometer from a smaller town.
Such accidents are rare in the launch industry, but not unprecedented. Normally, during a static fire test, the mass of the propellant on board a vehicle combined with strong clamps hold the rocket in place. However, in 1952, an American Viking rocket broke free from its moorings at the White Sands missile range in New Mexico and crashed 6 kilometres from the launch site with no casualties.
How big will the setback be?
It’s unclear how serious this setback will be for Space Pioneer, a quasi-private company founded in 2019. Just over a year ago, Space Pioneer became the first Chinese company to reach orbit with a liquid-fueled rocket. It did so, impressively, on the first attempt of its small Tianlong-2 rocket. It was a remarkable achievement, but the rocket’s engines were provided by a Chinese state-owned company, the Academy of Aerospace Liquid Propulsion Technology, rather than the private company.
Space Pioneer says it is building its own kerosene-fueled engines, known as TH-12, for the larger Tianlong-3 rocket (they appear to have worked as expected this weekend). Nine of these engines will propel the Tianlong-3 rocket, which is expected to have a thrust of 17 tons, into low-Earth orbit. The rocket’s design and the planned reusability of its first stage mimic the Falcon 9 rocket developed by the American company SpaceX.
Space Pioneer had been preparing the vehicle for its debut launch later this summer or in the fall, and the first-stage static-burn tests are indicative of the final phase of testing a rocket requires before liftoff. The company’s statement did not set a new timeline for a launch attempt, but said it would complete the failure analysis “as soon as possible.”
China has the world’s most dynamic commercial space industry outside the United States. Nearly a decade ago, the country’s leaders pledged to share state-owned technology with companies that raised private funding, seeking to emulate the commercial success of SpaceX and other American companies.
There are now dozens of Chinese companies developing rockets, satellites and other products for space flight. Space Pioneer has been one of the most promising, having raised more than $400 million since its inception five years ago.
This story originally appeared in Art-Technica.