A Chinese rocket carrying a new communications satellite for Indonesia has failed to reach orbit in a launch gone awry, the second failure for China’s space agency in less than a month, state media reported today (April 9).

The Long March 3B rocket lifted off today at 7:46 a.m. EDT (1146 GMT) from China’s Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan, where the local time was 7:46 p.m. on Thursday night, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The rocket was carrying the Palapa-N1, also known as the Nusantara Dua, a next-generation satellite for broadband and broadcast communications built for the Indonesian joint venture of Indosat Ooredoo and Pasifik Satelit Nusantara.

The first and second stages of the three-stage Long March 3B rocket appeared to perform well during the outset of Thursday’s launch. But something went wrong with the third stage, raining debris back to Earth and destroying the Palapa-N1 satellite, Xinhua reported.

Videos posted on China’s social media site Weibo showed several views of the initial launch. Other videos from Guam showed what appeared to be fiery debris streaking across the sky.

Officials with the Guam Homeland Defense and Civil Defense (GHS/OCD) and the Mariana Regional Fusion Center (MRFC) said the fireball was likely connected to China’s failed launch. They were monitoring all events in the region, “including widely circulated videos of a fiery object over the Marianas sky this evening,” the officials said in a statement.

“In concert with federal partners, GHS/OCD and MRFC identified that the object was likely connected to a scheduled satellite test launch from China,” they added.

The failed Long March 3B launch marks China’s second launch failure in less than a month. On March 16, a Long March 7A rocket failed to launch a classified satellite into orbit during a debut test flight from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on China’s southern Hainan Island.

China was not the only country launching rockets today.

A Russian Soyuz rocket successfully launched a new U.S.-Russian crew to the International Space Station from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:05 a.m. EDT (0805 GMT). That mission successfully reached the space station six hours later, and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner joined the station’s Expedition 62 crew.

China’s work in space has hit headlines these past few months as NASA’s authorization bill for fiscal year 2020 proceeds through the government’s approval process. The House version of the bill, passed in late January, calls for the National Security Council “to coordinate an interagency assessment of the space exploration capabilities of the People’s Republic of China,” including both “any threats to United States assets in space” and China’s plans to partner with other countries.

Although the bill does not mention moon activities specifically, Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., told delegates at the Space Foundation’s State of Space conference in February that he is worried about the security implications if China has a permanent presence on the moon.

“They very much have military thoughts in mind when it comes to what they can do with a military presence on the moon, and the ability to see things and track things with the unchanging platforms that no one really has right now,” Lamborn said at the conference, referring to media reports from 2019 that the Chinese may be considering establishing a robotic base at the moon’s south pole.

China is indeed busy building up lunar capabilities, particularly after the success of the Chang’e-4 mission to the far side of the moon that includes a rover and a lander, which touched down in January 2019. China is also planning a sample-return mission known as Chang’e 5, scheduled to lift off in 2020 and land in Oceanus Procellarum. An overview of the nation’s moon plans published in Science last year suggests that Chang’e 6 will return samples and Chang’e 7 will examine the lunar south pole’s environment and resources. Both Chang’e 6 and Chang’e 7 are expected to lift off in the 2020s.

And China does not separate its scientific and military space programs as the U.S. does, with NASA being a strictly civilian agency. Instead, the China National Space Administration is a branch of the Chinese military. So when media reports emerged in October that China was building a spacecraft outside sources say may be capable of carrying humans to the moon, some worried that the transition from robotic to human exploration could pave the way for a more military focus at the moon.

But this ambitious robotic lunar plan does not seem like a military threat, according to an expert on China’s space program. “It may, in the minds of some Americans, present some sort of geopolitical or psychological challenge,” Gregory Kulacki, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ China project manager for the global security program, said in an email to Space.com. “But I find it difficult to see how the Chinese landing on the moon is threatening to the United States or any other nation.”

Time will tell.

Right now, there are few opportunities for NASA to collaborate with China, since a congressional mandate has banned the agency from cooperating with China without prior approval since 2011. But Kulacki said the U.S. should consider collaborations in space with China. There is a precedent: NASA and the Soviet Union had many scientific collaborations during the Cold War, including a joint human mission called the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975.

But the Soviet Union was interested in partnering in low Earth orbit; China may not be. Its human spaceflight goals are based on a blueprint first set out in the 1980s under a program known as Project 921, Dean Cheng, a research fellow for Asian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told Space.com. The project calls for a Chinese ability (not a multinational ability, he emphasized) to send a person into orbit around Earth. China further set out its goals in five-year plans, the current of which runs through 2021.

So far, Cheng said, China’s five-year plans have closely followed Project 921 and no human visits to the moon have been envisioned so far. Today, the program features the Earth-orbiting Shenzhou spacecraft (which fly roughly every two years) and a series of small space stations called Tiangong, which have seen occasional visits by taikonauts, Chinese astronauts.

“We in the West … speculate that presumably these programs will merge somewhere along the line,” Cheng said, referring to the Earth-orbiting human program and the lunar robotic program. “You get lots of speculation about how, where, what, and when, but as far as I know, we have never seen a Chinese official statement that they are going to the moon [with humans].”

And if China does shift its human-exploration focus to the moon, how soon would they try to land? Nowhere near as quickly as the U.S., which is trying to land people on the moon’s south pole in 2024, according to Cheng. He said there is “no reason” to think a landing would happen between 2021 and 2026, as China’s heavy-lift rocket that presumably would be used for human moon missions — the Long March 5 — has not yet been approved to carry humans.

A crewed lunar mission in the late 2020s is possible, he said, but “extraordinarily ambitious” given that China currently launches people into space every two years and has not gathered the detailed information on human performance in space that it would want before embarking on more far-ranging flights.

“What that would suggest is a 2031 to 2035 time frame,” Cheng said. “But that’s Dean Cheng’s opinion. There is no official Chinese policy.”

HELSINKI — China’s attempt to launch its first new-generation Long March 7A rocket ended in failure Monday, resulting in a classified satellite apparently failing to enter geosynchronous transfer orbit.

Liftoff from the coastal Wenchang Satellite Launch Center occurred at 9:34 a.m. Eastern. Launch was initially confirmed by images and footage shared online by distant spectators.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., (CASC), which developed and manufactured the rocket, typically announces launches following declaration of mission success. Similar mission profiles are usually announced to be successful around an hour after launch, but no announcement was made.

State news agency confirmed failure (Chinese) just under two hours after launch, with no cause nor nature of the failure stated. An investigation into the anomaly will follow.

The payload for the launch was earlier stated to be named ‘new technology verification satellite-6’. No further details were released ahead of launch.

Measures to counter the spread of the novel coronavirus have been in force at Wenchang spaceport, though launch campaigns continued.

The launch preparations were conduced discreetly at Wenchang. No announcement of rollout was made nor were airspace closure notices issued. Previous launches from Wenchang, including the return to flight of the Long March 5 in December, were live streamed.

Preparations for the test flight of the Long March 5B are also underway at Wenchang. It is unclear if the Long March 7A failure will have any impact on the launch planned for mid-late April.

Potential impacts of failure

The Long March 7A is a variant of the standard Long March 7, which has flown twice. A 2017 mission to test the Tianzhou refueling spacecraft with Tiangong-2 space lab was its most recent activity. The launcher uses RP-1 and liquid oxygen propellant and could replace older models using toxic propellants.

It modular design means it shares common engines with other new, cryogenic Long March vehicles. Depending on the cause of the anomaly, the failure could impact upcoming missions.

The RP-1/liquid oxygen side boosters and core stage share commonalities with the Long March 5, including YF-100 engines. An issue with these engines could potentially impact planned Long March 5 missions, including China’s first independent interplanetary mission—to Mars—in July. It could also have knock-on effects for China’s space station plans.

If the issue was with the second stage YF-115 engines, the impact of the failure could be limited to the Long March 6 and 7 series rockets. A new variant of the Long March 6 developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology is expected later in 2020.

An upper stage problem could see knock-on effects for the older, Long March 3 series rockets, as the Long March 7A third stage is adapted from the Long March 3B. The 3B is the current workhorse for Chinese GTO launches.

Long March 7A

The 60.13-meter-long Long March 7A has a liftoff mass of around 573 metric tons, according to the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, a CASC subsidiary.

The 7A uses the same 3.35-meter-diameter kerolox core and four 2.25-meter-diameter side boosters as the stand Long March 7 but includes an additional hydrolox third stage. The added stage is adapted from the older generation Long March 3B rocket to allow it to send payloads to GTO.

The new launch vehicle could become China’s main rocket for communications satellite missions. The modularised, cryogenic rocket could have benefits in terms of cost, but also in reducing threat to life and property.

The older, hypergolic Long March 3B is China’s current option for launches to GTO. The 3B launches from deep inland at Xichang, Sichuan province, resulting in spent stages frequently falling on inhabited areas. The Long March 7A launches from the coastal Wenchang spaceport, meaning its flightpath is over the sea.

China’s new Long March 5 and 7 series rockets are a new generation of launch vehicles. They are designed to boost the country’s launch capabilities and to some extent replace the ageing hypergolic Long March launch vehicles.

The new rockets are delivered to Wenchang on the island province of Hainan via specially designed cargo ships. The older, smaller diameter Long March vehicles are transported by the nation’s rail system to inland launch centers.

China’s nascent commercial space sector is also seeing the development of new light- and medium-lift launchers which could potentially provide launch services.

Coronavirus impacts space activities

Launch of the Long March 7A was conducted despite the impacts of the coronavirus outbreak.

A new Long March 5B mission, expected to launch from Wenchang in mid-late April, will involved an uncrewed test flight of a new generation crewed spacecraft. If successful the following Long March 5B mission is expected to launch the core module of China’s space station into LEO.

China appears committed to conducting more than 40 launches across 2020, despite the outbreak. Expace, a launch service provider spin-off from defense contractor CASIC, has resumed activities despite its facilities being close to the epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei. The city and province had been in lockdown, preventing work and transport of Kuaizhou rockets to Jiuquan space center in the northwest of China.

European rocket launches have meanwhile been suspended. NASA centers are switching to remote work with further impacts uncertain. Roscosmos announced Monday the cancelation of media attendance for the Soyuz MS-16 launch scheduled April 9.

America’s response to China’s growing 5G capabilities provides a likely template for its approach to rivalry in space. Washington has blacklisted the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, urged governments not to work with it in developing 5G networks, and cautioned allies that using Huawei equipment will lead to less intelligence sharing.

Washington justifies its tough approach by asserting that the spread of Huawei 5G networks will give China undue global influence. But the United States is also seeking to preserve American dominance, fearing that Huawei’s 5G expertise threatens U.S. leadership in next-generation technologies.

For other countries, being squeezed between Washington and Beijing presents awkward problems. Acceding to U.S. pressure by banning Huawei hurts competition, delays network rollouts and disrupts commerce. In practice, Huawei is already too entrenched in many countries for bans to be feasible.

Nevertheless, this superpower showdown will likely soon extend into the space economy, another technology area of global importance. U.S. leadership in the cosmos used to be uncontested, but China is catching up. Last year, China launched the most rockets into Earth orbit. In January, it made history by landing the robotic probe Chang’e 4 on the unexplored far side of the moon, in the South Pole-Aitken basin.

In July, Beijing-based Interstellar Glory Space Technology (also known as iSpace) became the first private Chinese company to launch a rocket into orbit. Its four-stage Hyperbola 1 rocket achieved lift off from the Jiuquan space base, located in China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and carried several small satellites and other payloads into an orbit approximately 300 kilometers above Earth, according to the company.

At some point, China will offer other countries opportunities to work with it in space. Beijing has already signed dozens of international agreements on space issues, and has cooperated with partners as varied as Algeria, Brazil, France, and Pakistan.

It intends to expand its network, and is inviting other countries to participate in plans to establish a new space station in Earth orbit — a project that conveniently underscores growing uncertainty about the fate of the International Space Station led by the United States and Russia. Beijing is also developing plans to send a probe to Mars in 2020. After that, scientists hope to explore asteroids and even land on one.

Almost certainly, Washington will try to insist that countries should avoid involvement in Chinese space technology, just as it has sought to isolate Huawei’s 5G technology. This will be especially true for countries that already work closely with the American government. New Zealand and Australia, for instance, respectively launch satellites and monitor deep space communications for NASA.

Washington did not intervene in October 2018 when New Zealand’s space agency signed an agreement with its counterpart in Germany, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt. This agreement may lead to the German space agency using New Zealand’s spaceport in the Māhia Peninsula. Surely, though, Washington would react if New Zealand reached a similar agreement with China’s space agency. If Washington is concerned about security threats from Huawei’s 5G, imagine how it would respond to the prospect of its intelligence agencies sharing launch facilities with China.

Governments should not rush to work with Beijing in space. There are legitimate reasons for caution about partnering with Chinese companies. Recall last year’s Bloomberg Businessweek report that Chinese intelligence services had inserted spyware in server motherboards made by subcontractors in China for California-based Super Micro Computer. The company, which supplies server equipment to many American companies and U.S. government agencies, denies the claims and told customers in December that independent tests had found no malicious hardware in its motherboards. U.S. customers such as Apple and Amazon have also denied Bloomberg’s assertions.

It is certainly conceivable, however, that Chinese companies abroad provide Beijing with intelligence, particularly if they are state-owned. Countries should consider this potential concern, and others, before working with China in the space sector. But the point is that countries should be free to choose to work with China, the United States, both, or neither.

With 5G, it is too late to achieve such flexibility. In the space sector, it is not. But governments need to take measures now that will ensure their ability to resist external pressure in the future. They can do this by signing bilateral agreements with each other, or better yet by signing larger multilateral deals.

They should affirm that they will work with international partners based on nonpolitical criteria. And they should undertake to denounce pressure collectively and publicly, whether it comes from China or from the United States. Countries should also agree that if China or the U.S. attempts to punish smaller countries, then signatories will not take advantage of the situation and undercut each other’s independence.

If, for example, Beijing dislikes a country signing an agreement with the United States and cancels contracts with that country, other countries should avoid stepping in to take those contracts.

Pressure to choose sides in this new space race will start soon. It is almost certain that the space industry will be a major driver of global economic growth. Governments should anticipate both inevitabilities. By being proactive, they can maximize their participation in space and, in so doing, advance their economic wellbeing.

The three-stage rocket, Zhuque-1, was developed by Beijing-based Landspace. The company said in a microblog post after nominal first and second stages that the spacecraft failed to reach orbit as a result of an issue with the third stage.

The company said that “cowling separation was normal but something abnormal happened after the second stage.” The statement on its Weibo social media account did not elaborate.

Landspace was founded in 2015 and soon aimed to be the first Chinese private company to deliver a satellite into orbit. The company said it was the first private licensed company in China to launch carrier rockets.

Zhuque-1 was carrying a satellite named “Future” built for state media China Central Television.

In May, China launched “Chongqing Liangjiang Star” into space, the first rocket developed by Beijing-based private firm OneSpace Technology.
Since coming to office in 2012, President Xi Jinping has made becoming a “space flight superpower” a priority for the government, which has a goal of sending a permanent manned space station into orbit by around 2022.

China’s first space station is expected to come crashing down to Earth next year, fuelling concerns that Chinese space authorities have lost control of the 8.5-tonne module.

The Tiangong-1 or “Heavenly Palace” lab was described as a “potent political symbol” of China’s growing power when it was launched in 2011 as part of an ambitious scientific push to turn China into a space superpower.

However, speaking at a satellite launch centre in the Gobi Desert last week officials said the unmanned module had now “comprehensively fulfilled its historical mission” and was set to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere at some point in the second half of 2017.

“Based on our calculation and analysis, most parts of the space lab will burn up during falling,” the deputy director of China’s manned space engineering office, Wu Ping, was quoted as saying by official news agency Xinhua.

The announcement appeared to confirm months of speculation that China had lost control of the 10.4m-long module after it suffered some kind of technical or mechanical failure.

Jonathan McDowell, renowned Harvard astrophysicist and space industry enthusiast, said the announcement suggested China had lost control of the station and that it would re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere “naturally.”

If this is the case, it would be impossible to predict where the debris from the space station will land.

“You really can’t steer these things,” he said. “Even a couple of days before it re-enters we probably won’t know better than six or seven hours, plus or minus, when it’s going to come down. Not knowing when it’s going to come down translates as not knowing where its going to come down.”

McDowell said a slight change in atmospheric conditions could nudge the landing site “from one continent to the next”.

While most of the eight tonnes of space station would melt as it passes through the atmosphere, McDowell said some parts, such as the rocket engines, were so dense that they wouldn’t burn up completely.

“There will be lumps of about 100kg or so, still enough to give you a nasty wallop if it hit you,” he said.

“Yes there’s a chance it will do damage, it might take out someone’s car, there will be a rain of a few pieces of metal, it might go through someone’s roof, like if a flap fell off a plane, but it is not widespread damage.”

Wu Ping, the space official, told reporters the lab – which was launched into space amid great fanfare in September 2011 – had made “important contributions to China’s manned space cause” during its four and a half years of service.

She claimed its return to earth was “unlikely to affect aviation activities or cause damage to the ground”.

“China has always highly valued the management of space debris, conducting research and tests on space debris mitigation and cleaning,” Wu said, according to Xinhua.

Wu said Tiangong-1 was “currently intact” and that authorities would “continue to monitor [it] and strengthen early warning for possible collision with objects.”

“If necessary, China will release a forecast of its falling and report it internationally,” she added.

Space enthusiasts who have been monitoring Tiangong-1, and attempting to draw attention to its plight, fear there is a risk – albeit small – that pieces of the falling lab could cause damage back on earth.

“It could be a real bad day if pieces of this came down in a populated area,” Thomas Dorman, an amateur astronomer who has been attempting to track the missing lab, was quoted as saying by the space.com website in June.

China’s first space lab was most likely to land in the ocean or in an uninhabited area, Dorman admitted.

“But remember – sometimes, the odds just do not work out, so this may bear watching.”