{"id":52809,"date":"2026-08-11T12:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T07:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=52809"},"modified":"2026-08-11T12:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T07:05:11","slug":"china-rocket-launch-fails-after-flight-anomaly-reports-of-explosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/china-rocket-launch-fails-after-flight-anomaly-reports-of-explosion\/","title":{"rendered":"China rocket launch fails after ‘flight anomaly’, reports of explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Chinese rocket carrying a communications satellite failed in its launch, state media said, attributing the failure to a “flight anomaly” as reports and videos suggested the spacecraft had exploded in mid-air.<\/p>\n

Beijing has ploughed billions of dollars into its space programme in recent years to achieve what President Xi Jinping calls the country’s “space dream”.<\/p>\n

Monday’s rare launch failure involved a Long March 7A carrier rocket, which lifted off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China’s southernmost province of Hainan at 8:02 pm (1202 GMT), state news agency Xinhua said.<\/p>\n

An “anomaly” occurred when the rocket, which was carrying the Zhongxing-4B communications satellite, was in flight, Xinhua added.<\/p>\n

The cause of the failure is under investigation, it said.<\/p>\n

Singapore-based broadcaster Channel NewsAsia said in an Instagram post that the rocket had exploded and posted footage from the scene of awestruck crowds watching a fiery ball in the sky.<\/p>\n

One video, posted a few hours after the launch by a social media profile located in Hainan, showed a rocket exploding into flames around 85 seconds after it blasted off, leaving behind a cloud of grey smoke as debris fell to the ground.<\/p>\n

China successfully landed a reusable rocket for the first time in July, according to its space agency, marking a major step in its space ambitions and in reducing launch costs.<\/p>\n

The country is aiming to land astronauts on the Moon before 2030, a race in which the United States is also competing with its Artemis programme.<\/p>\n

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, commenting on a post about Monday’s failed launch on X, said that “rockets are insanely hard”.\u00a0“I hope they have a speedy recovery,” he added.<\/p>\n

A four-tonne piece of a SpaceX rocket was believed to have unintentionally crashed into the Moon on Wednesday, a collision expected to leave behind a lunar crater.<\/p>\n

China’s maiden launch of the Long March 7A from the Wenchang site in 2020 was also unsuccessful after “a malfunction occurred”, Xinhua reported in March that year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Chinese rocket carrying a communications satellite failed in its launch, state media said, attributing the failure to a “flight anomaly” as reports and videos suggested the spacecraft had exploded in mid-air. Beijing has ploughed billions of dollars into its space programme in recent years to achieve what President Xi Jinping calls the country’s “space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52809"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52809"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52812,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52809\/revisions\/52812"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}