One of the most promising Chinese space startups, Space Pioneer, experienced a serious anomaly last weekend while testing the first stage of its Tianlong-3 rocket near the city of Gongyi.
The rocket was undergoing a static fire test of the stage, in which a vehicle is clamped to a test stand while its engines are ignited, when the booster broke free. According to a statement from the company, the rocket was not sufficiently clamped down and blasted off from the test stand “due to a structural failure.”
Video of the accidental ascent showed the rocket rising several hundred meters into the sky before it crashed explosively into a mountain 1.5 kilometers
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