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The Guardian has announced that the plane that would have been the first Chinese rocket private to send a satellite in orbit around the Earth failed Saturday, with a problem of deployment of the third floor of Landspace Zhuque-1.
It is unclear exactly what went wrong, although videos of the incident clearly show that its payload – a satellite called "Future" intended to be used as part of Chinese network operations China Central Television – did not really seem to have much chance of reaching orbit.
The Guardian wrote that Landspace did not specify the nature of the failure:
The three-stage rocket, Zhuque-1, was developed by Landspace, a company based in Beijing. The company said in a microblog after the first and second nominal stages that the satellite had not managed to reach orbit because of a problem encountered with the third step.
The company stated that "the separation of the hoods was normal but that something abnormal happened after the second stage". The statement on his Weibo social network account does not specify.
According to SpaceNews, the development of the Zhuque-1 rocket cost about $ 14 million and its height was about 19 meters, weighing nearly 30 tons. It has been developed as part of a private space flight campaign conducted in China for several years. At least 10 national companies compete for the market. According to SpaceNews, the fourth-stage engines of the OS-M rocket launched by Rival OneSpace were tested earlier this month and plan to launch a payload into orbit by the end of the year. Year, becoming the first private Chinese company to launch a rocket in space. in May 2018.
"Reliability is only built up over time, so the pace and launch experience will have to be acquired before reliability can actually be assessed for Landspace or any other launch company," he said. said the aerospace expert from Ohio State University, John Horack. "You have to wait for failures because it is not an easy affair. SpaceX, Orbital, Virgin and others have all solved the problem. The first failures can shatter a business almost before even starting. "
SpaceNews added that it was unclear whether the failure of Saturday's launch condemned Landspace's more grandiose ambitions, which included a much larger Zhuque-2 model:
The two-stage Zhuque-2 (ZQ-2), which Landspace intends to manufacture next year and be launched for the first time in 2020, will measure 48.8 meters high for a diameter of 3.35 meters and will be able to deliver 4,000 kilograms. payload capacity for a 200 km low Earth orbit and a 2,000 kg to 500 km SSO using 80 and 10 tonne Methalox engines. ,,, Landspace had announced plans to develop larger Zhuque-2 Series three-stage rockets … use variable thrust engines to allow vertical landing attempts and reuse of first-stage aircraft, capable of to transport up to 32,000 kilograms in a 200 km low Earth orbit.
(For comparison, the Zhuque-2 Advanced Model's plans would have payload capacity somewhere between the SpaceX Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy, which is really a very high bar.)
Although it was a setback for Landspace, it was not as spectacular as Interstellar Technologies' attempt to be the first Japanese company to launch a rocket into space at the end of June. , when his MOMO-2 rocket barely left the launch pad. fall back and explode.
[The Guardian/SpaceNews]