The 24-meter-tall solid-propellant Hyperbola-1 rocket from the private Chinese company iSpace launched on Thursday at 07:40 Beijing time (02:40 Moscow time) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. On board there were three meteorological satellites of the Yunyao Aerospace Technology company, but they did not reach orbit. The failure occurred during the fourth stage of the rocket, which led to the loss of the payload.
Image Source: Ispace
ISpace became the first private rocket company in China to commercially launch a payload into space, which happened back in 2019. For this, she was called “Chinese SpaceX” behind her back. But soon she suffered a setback with the Hyperbola-1 missiles. Three consecutive launches ended in accidents for various reasons. The current failure of the fourth stage was the fourth in a series of failures.
«The first, second and third stages of the rocket flew normally, but an anomaly occurred on the fourth stage and the launch mission ended in failure,” the company said, adding that the specific reasons for the failure would be announced as soon as possible after a detailed investigation.
The relatively small Hyperbola-1 rocket is capable of delivering 300 kg of payload to a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 km. In this case, the rocket carried Yunyao-1 weather satellites 15, 16 and 17 for Tianjin-based Yunyao Aerospace Technology. These satellites have not been launched into orbit. Yunyao Aerospace Technology planned to launch about 40 satellites this year in order to complete the creation of the Yunyao-1 constellation of 90 devices by next year.
«Our group will break the foreign monopoly and provide the Belt and Road Initiative countries with high-resolution weather monitoring services and a high-precision and large-scale earthquake early warning system,” a Yunyao Aerospace representative previously told Tianjin Daily.
In addition to the Hyperbola-1 rocket, iSpace is developing and testing reusable liquid fuel rockets using methane and oxygen fuel pairs. The company is currently testing a prototype Hyperbola-2 rocket. On its basis, the heavier Hyperbola-3 will be created, the first flight of which is promised to take place in 2025. The failure of the Hyperbola-1 rocket could push back the launch schedule to investigate and determine the cause of the accidents.