Private Chinese rocket fails during launch, 3 satellites lost

A private Chinese rocket just suffered its second-ever failure.

Galactic Energy’s solid-fuel Ceres-1 rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 11:02 p.m. EST on Sunday (Nov. 9; 0402 GMT and 12:02 p.m. local time on Nov. 10), carrying three satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO).

The rocket’s first three stages performed well, according to media reports, but its fourth and final stage shut down too early, leading to the loss of all three payloads.

Those payloads were two satellites for China’s Jilin-1 commercial Earth-observation constellation, as well as a craft developed by Zhongbei University.

“We offer our sincerest apologies to the mission’s customer and to everyone who supports Galactic Energy,” the Beijing-based company said in a statement, according to the Global Times, an affiliate of the People’s Daily, the leading paper of the Chinese Communist Party.

“We will draw lessons from the mission setback and continue to optimize rocket design and quality-management systems,” the statement added.

The Ceres-1 stands about 62 feet (19 meters) tall and can haul 880 pounds (400 kilograms) of payload to LEO. The rocket debuted in November 2020 and flew successfully nine times in a row before suffering a failure in September 2023.

The Ceres-1 bounced back from that problem, notching 11 consecutive successes before Sunday night’s setback. The rocket has now flown a total of 22 missions, with two failures.

Galactic Energy is thinking beyond the Ceres-1; it’s also developing the more powerful Ceres-2 and Pallas-1, a rocket that will feature a reusable first stage like that of SpaceX’s Falcon 9.