A Chinese space startup accidentally launched its new rocket

One of China’s most promising space startups, Space Pioneer, experienced a serious anomaly during the test of the first stage of its Tianlong-3 rocket near the city of Gongyi last weekend.

The rocket was undergoing a static stage fire test, in which a vehicle is clamped to a test stand while its engines fire, when the booster broke away. According to a company statement, the rocket was not clamped down sufficiently and blasted off the test stand “due to a structural failure.”

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

That’s not entirely true. Gongyi is located in Henan Province in eastern China on the Yellow River and has a population of about 800,000 people. The test site is only about five kilometers from the city center and less than a kilometer from a smaller village.

Such accidents are rare but not unprecedented in the rocket industry. Normally, during a static fire test, a rocket is held to the ground by the mass of fuel on board a vehicle and strong clamps. In 1952, however, a U.S. Viking rocket broke free from its moorings at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It crashed 6 kilometers beyond the launch site, with no injuries.

How big was the setback?

It is unclear how big 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, doing so impressively on the first attempt of its small Tianlong-2 rocket. This was a remarkable feat, but the rocket’s engines were supplied not by the private company but by a Chinese state-owned enterprise, the Academy of Aerospace Liquid Propulsion Technology.

For the larger Tianlong-3 rocket, Space Pioneer makes its own kerosene-fueled engines, known as TH-12s. (These 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 planned reuse of its first stage are similar to the Falcon 9 rocket developed by the US company SpaceX.

Space Pioneer was preparing the vehicle for its first launch in the summer or fall – and the first-stage static ignition tests are indicative of the final phase of testing a rocket undergoes before liftoff. The company’s statement did not set a new timeline for a launch attempt, but said it would complete failure analysis “as soon as possible.”

China has the most dynamic commercial space industry in the world after the United States. Nearly a decade ago, the country’s leaders committed to sharing state-owned technology with companies that raised private funds to emulate the commercial success of SpaceX and other U.S. companies.

Today, dozens of Chinese companies are developing rockets, satellites and other products for space travel. Space Pioneer is one of the most promising companies and has raised more than $400 million since its founding five years ago.

This story originally appeared on Ars-Technica.