A private Chinese rocket made an unscheduled flight over the weekend.
Beijing-based Space Pioneer conducted a “static fire” test of the first stage of its new Tianlong-3 rocket on Sunday (30 June) in Gongyi, a city of about 800,000 people in central China’s Henan province.
Space Pioneer briefly fired the stage’s engines while the vehicle remained anchored to the launch pad. That’s how it was supposed to work. But the anchoring mechanism failed on Sunday and the rocket lifted off in a dramatic and frightening surprise mission.
This is apparently what was supposed to be a STATIC FIRE TEST of a Tianlong-3 first stage by China’s space pioneer today. That’s catastrophic, not static. The company was aiming for an orbital launch in the coming months.
The mission was also brief, ending after just 50 seconds when Tianlong-3 crashed into a hilly area near Gongyi, creating a massive fireball that was captured on video by some onlookers.
Henan emergency management officials told The Paper, a Shanghai-based media outlet, that no one was injured in the blast.
Space Pioneer has some space experience: Its Tianlong-2 rocket reached orbit in April 2023, becoming the first private Chinese launch vehicle to do so. Tianlong-3 is intended to be a significant leap forward for the company; the rocket is modelled on SpaceX‘s Falcon 9, according to SpaceNews, and like that workhorse, it is intended to be partially reusable.
Tianlong-3 will also be considerably more powerful than its older cousin; it will be able to carry 17 tonnes of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO), SpaceNews reported, compared to Tianlong-2’s 2-tonne limit.
Another view here. I hope there are no casualties. This is absolutely wild. And Space Pioneer has already reached orbit with Tianlong-2, so this is just amazing.
Tianlong-3 is still in development, and it’s unclear at this stage how Sunday’s accident will affect the rocket’s testing campaign and future schedule.
“Tianlong”, by the way, translates as “Heavenly Dragon”. The name is similar to that of China’s LEO space station, Tiangong, which means “Heavenly Palace”.
