Space Pioneer crash: Chinese rocket crashes in accidental launch during ground test

• Space Pioneer’s Tianlong-3 rocket launched by mistake.
• Video footage shows it crashing back to earth after “structural failures”.
• It caused local fires but the blazes have been successfully dealt with.

A Chinese rocket crashed in flames after accidentally launching over the weekend. Space Pioneer has confirmed the crash which happened during a ground test. 

The private company, also known as Beijing Tianbing Technology, was testing its Tianlong-3 rocket in Gongyi, a city of about 800,000 people in the central Chinese province of Henan. It crashed when the first stage of the rocket detached from the launch pad during a test. 

Due to structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench, the first-stage rocket separated from the test bench.,” Space Pioneer admitted in a statement on WeChat, translated from Chinese. “After liftoff, the onboard computer automatically shut down, and the rocket fell into a deep mountain 1.5 kilometres southwest of the test platform. The rocket body disintegrated after falling into the mountain.” 

The company confirmed that there had been no injuries as people had been evacuated from the area ahead of the test. However The Guardian reports that parts of the rocket caused a fire, according to a separate statement from the Gongyi emergency management bureau.

Video footage from the crash shows the rocket shooting straight up into the air before a burst of flames causes it to turn horizontal, stopping its upward progress and crash back to the ground. The clip was first published on social media in China by the digital media outlet The Paper. 

The Tianlong-3 is a two-stage rocket that is partly reusable. It has been compared to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and it is fuelled by kerlox (kerosene-liquid oxygen). 

Space Pioneer successfully launched its Tianlong-2 rocket in April last year, the company having been founded in 2019. The company’s mission statement is to “pursue new breakthroughs in technology and performance, [and] to select a technological path based on the needs of the commercial market to improve launch efficiency and reduce launch costs”. 

Further launches of the Tianlong-3 rocket are planned for later in 2024 in Wenchang and Jiuquan. 

If you would like to learn more about China’s ‘ambitious’ plans for its space program, YouTube channel Astrographic have a fantastic video on the subject. It is 17 minutes long and dives into the ‘insanely ambitious’ plans the Chinese have for space and the impacts it could have on global power dynamics.