First launch of Chinese Kuaizhou-11 rocket ends in failure
HELSINKI —
Launch of a new Chinese Kuaizhou-11 commercial solid rocket ended in failure Friday resulting in the loss of two satellites.
The Kuaizhou-11 lifted off at 12:17 a.m. Eastern from a transporter erector launcher at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, northwest China.
Video footage of the launch taken from a delayed stream indicates the rocket performed well for at least one minute, with unofficial reports of first and second stage separation.
Terse reports from Chinese media state that the specific cause of the failure is ‘under further analysis and investigation’.
The first payload was a Jilin-1 video satellite developed by Changguang Satellite Co. Ltd., for Bilibili, a Chinese video sharing website.
Changguang Satellite
is a commercial offshoot of the state-owned Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The second satellite
was reported to be CentiSpace-1-S2 (Weili-1-02). The previous satellite in the series was for low-Earth orbit navigation enhancement, developed for Beijing Future Navigation Technology Co., Ltd.
The debut of the Kuaizhou-11
was initially projected for 2018. Footage published by CCTV in 2019 suggested an explosive failure during first stage engine testing.
The mission
was China’s 19th launch of 2020, following the successful launch of the APSTAR-6D communications satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit Thursday.
China has suffered three failures this year.
These were the debut launch of the Long March 7A in March, a new launcher which may replace the aging, hypergolic Long March 3B.
The latter launcher failed in April resulting in the loss of the Indonesian Palapa-N1 communications satellite.
SpaceNews
https://spacenews.com/first-launch-of-chinese-kuaizhou-11-rocket-ends-in-failure/