China's first methane-fueled rocket, launched into orbit on Wednesday (14/12), failed to reach its destination.
The Zhuque-2 rocket, developed by Beijing-based company Landspace, lifted off in the first orbit mission from a methane-fueled launcher and the first launch of a commercially developed liquid propellant rocket by China.
Despite high hopes for the historic mission, the Zhuque-2 failed to enter orbit and lost all 14 of the satellites it was carrying.
The launch took place at China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on Wednesday (14/12) and was intended to put various commercial satellites into a Sun-synchronous orbit. However, according to reports, the second stage of the rocket failed, resulting in mission failure and loss of all satellites.
The Chinese space agency has yet to issue an official statement about the failure of the launch. However, based on footage posted on Twitter after launch, it appears that an anomaly occurred in that the second stage of the rocket prevented the Zhuque-2 from reaching orbital velocity.
Snapshots taken from coverage of the launch also show the rocket's first stage performing well, but losing a severe loss of altitude and speed roughly five minutes into flight.
👀Leaked footage of the first launch of LANDSPACE's Zhuque-2 shows liftoff at ~08:30:25UTC on DEC.14. At the time of anomaly at ~T+300s, the second stage main engine has been cut off and the payload fairing has been jettisoned. https://t.co/fAyuoOkS1A pic.twitter.com/TBHEA5W0ji
— China 'N Asia Spaceflight 🚀🛰️🙏 (@CNSpaceflight) December 14, 2022
Landspace is currently working on a second version of the Zhuque-2 rocket, but it is not yet known when the next launch will take place. Despite the Zhuque-2's failure, the mission demonstrated the rapid progress made by the Chinese space program, both in terms of national and commercial capabilities.
Quoted from Space.com, China conducted 60 successful launches in 2022, and recently completed assembly of the Tiangong space station.
Chinese private space companies have also made headway this year, as more space launch service providers have started placing payloads in orbit on behalf of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC).