China’s final space launch attempt of the year failed to reach its designated orbit, resulting in the loss of all payloads on board.
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But it still concluded a record-breaking year for China’s space industry – with 68 orbital launch attempts, one more than last year’s high.
The Kinetica-1 Y6 rocket, developed by leading Chinese commercial rocket firm CAS Space, lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in China at 9.03am on Friday.
While the first two stages of the four-stage, solid-fuel rocket performed normally, it experienced “attitude instability” just three seconds after the third stage ignited.
This triggered the on board autonomous safety control system to initiate a self-destruction sequence, causing the mission to fail, according to a company statement issued hours later.
The failure led to the loss of 11 satellites, mostly domestic commercial ones.