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Launch error
China's attempt to launch a satellite into orbit ended in a trail of smoke and falling debris on Thursday morning.
Just before 7 am local time, an undrawn Long March 4C rocket took off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. A few minutes later, the spectators saw the smoke trails of the craft begin to wind in the sky – and what appeared to be fragments of the Chinese rocket began to fall to Earth.
Fifteen hours later, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua confirmed the failure of the mission – that is, China has now lost two rockets in as many months.
Separation anxiety
according to Xinhua, the problem relates to the third stage of the Chinese rocket, responsible for the final orbiting of a payload.
"The first and second stages of the rocket worked normally, while the third stage had abnormal operation," Xinhua reported, according to News from the space. "According to the monitoring data, the third stage of the rocket and satellite debris fell to the ground."
This is the first time that the Chinese government has launched a rocket that has failed since July 2017. However, a rocket launched by the Chinese aerospace start-up OneSpace failed in March 2019, a major blow to the emerging private space industry of country.
READ MORE: China fails since March 4[[[[News from the space]
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