A Chinese Space Startup Launched Its New Rocket By Accident

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One of the most promising Chinese space startups, 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 clamped to a test stand while its engines are ignited, when the booster broke free. According to a statement from the company , the rocket was not sufficiently clamped down and blasted off from the test stand "due to a structural failure."

Video of the accidental ascent showed the rocket rising several hundred meters into the sky before it crashed explosively into a mountain 1.5 kilometers from the test site. (See various angles of the accident here , on the social media site X, or on Weibo .) The statement from Space Pioneer sought to downplay the incident, saying it had implemented safety measures before the test, and there were no casualties as a result of the accident. "The test site is far away from the urban area of Gongyi," the company said.

This is not entirely true. Located in the Henan province in eastern China, alongside the Yellow River, Gongyi has a population of about 800,000 people. The test stand is only about 5 kilometers from the city's downtown and less than a kilometer from a smaller village.

Such accidents are rare in the launch industry but not unprecedented. Typically, during a static fire test, the mass of propellant onboard a vehicle combined with strong clamps hold a rocket down. However, in 1952, a US Viking rocket broke loose of its moorings at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It crashed 6 kilometers downrange of the launch site without casualties.

For the larger Tianlong-3 rocket, Space Pioneer says it is manufacturing its own kerosene-fueled engines, known as TH-12. (They appear to have performed as expected this weekend.) Nine of these engines will power the Tianlong-3 rocket, which is intended to have a thrust of 17 tons, to low-Earth orbit. The rocket's design and the planned reuse of its first stage mimic the Falcon 9 rocket developed by US-based SpaceX.