China’s space program suffers first rocket launch failure since 2017
This week,
China’s space program
suffered a failed launch for the first time in nearly two years when an attempt to send a satellite into orbit went awry.
In recent years, China has been full steam ahead in space missions.
Its space program launched more rockets than any other in the world last year, and made history in January by landing the Chang’e-4 on the far side of the moon.
China’s official Xinhua news agency
confirmed the launch failure on Thursday (May 23). The news came more than 12 hours after the launch.
The three-stage Long March 4 rocket
took off at China’s northern Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center around 6:49am Beijing time,
according to footage (video, link in Chinese) on the social-media platform Weibo.
Xinhua said the rocket’s third stage had “abnormal operation,” and it is likely that engineers are working to figure out what went wrong.
The 150-ft (46-m) rocket
carried an imaging satellite designed to help the Chinese government with intelligence gathering. The last use of this type of rocket was in May 2018,
sending up a relay satellite to serve as a communication bridge between the earth and the moon’s far side during the Chang’e-4 mission.
China’s space program suffered its last failure in July 2017 during a second attempt to launch a Long March 5 rocket.
It was a crucial operation to pave the way for China’s lunar sample return mission, which was scheduled to take place this year.
Quartz
https://qz.com/1626807/chinas-space-program-suffers-first-rocket-launch-failure-since-2017/