Tianlong-2 made its debut in April 2023, paving the way for its successor to take flight.Photo: Space Pioneer

Chinese company Space Pioneer accidentally launched the first stage of its Tianlong-3 rocket during a Sunday test of the vehicle that went terribly wrong. The rocket crashed and exploded near a city in Central China, but no injuries have been reported so far.

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Footage shared on social media showed the rocket’s first stage emerging from a massive cloud and taking to the skies before losing momentum as its engines shut down. It then falls to the ground, producing a large fireball.

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The accidental launch occurred during a hot firing test of the rocket on Sunday at a facility in Gongyi City, Henan Province. During the test, the rocket’s nine engines are ignited, while the vehicle is supposed to be secured to the ground, preventing it from heading toward orbit.

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Space Pioneer blamed a “structural failure” of the test bench for the rocket’s separation from the launch pad, the company wrote in a statement. The rocket’s onboard computer, however, automatically shut down the engines upon detecting unusual activity. That’s when Tianlong-3 plummeted towards a hilly area near the city.

Space Pioneer was hoping the hot firing test would lead to an orbital launch of its Tianlong-3 rocket within the coming months. The company has claimed that the performance of Tianlong-3 is comparable to that of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with the Chinese rocket capable of carrying 590 tons to orbit, while SpaceX’s two-stage reusable rocket can carry 605 tons.

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One of China’s leading space companies, Space Pioneer made history in April 2023 as the first commercial firm to successfully reach orbit on its first attempt with the Tianlong-2 rocket. Space Pioneer also became the first Chinese company to reach orbit with liquid rocket propulsion. Tiangong-3 is a larger liquid propellant rocket with a reusable first stage, which was designed to help launch China’s satellite internet network to orbit.

The incident comes a week after another video shared online showed a Chinese rocket falling above a populated area, with residents running for cover as the vehicle spewed a toxic chemical into the skies. Launch sites in China tend to be inland, posing a greater threat of rocket parts falling onto inhabited areas. The country’s newest launch site, the Hainan Commercial Launch Site, is located near the coastal national Wenchang spaceport on the island province of Hainan in the South China Sea, which may remove some of that threat from populated areas.

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