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Ling Xin

China’s final space launch attempt of the year failed to reach its designated orbit, resulting in the loss of all payloads on board.
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.
Among these was a French nanosatellite built by students at the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory and designed to study the South Atlantic magnetic anomaly – where the Earth’s magnetic field is unusually weak – from low-Earth orbit.
CAS Space pledged to carry out a swift investigation into the failed launch and make “every effort to ensure the success of subsequent flight missions”.
The Kinetica-1, also known as the Lijian-1, stands 30 metres (about 98 feet) high. It is a small-lift rocket capable of carrying a payload of 1.5 tonnes to a 500km (310-mile) sun-synchronous orbit.
All five previous Kinetica-1 launches were successful, and delivered 57 satellites into orbit in total.
The Y6 rocket introduced new technologies to reduce costs and improve efficiency, which might have contributed to the rare failure, space observers said.
Notably, it used an independently-designed detonator for the first time, CAS Space said on social media last month. Detonators are key components for creating precisely controlled explosions and facilitating stage separations in multistage rockets.
Kinetica-1 is specifically tailored for small satellite rideshare missions with payloads of up to a few hundred kilograms, according to the rocket’s chief designer, Shi Xiaoning.
In November, the successful launch of the Kinetica-1 Y5 delivered 15 satellites to their assigned orbits, including a remote-sensing satellite for Oman, CAS Space’s first international client. Shi said at the time that the rocket’s cost-efficiency and reliability had been noted by the international market.
Beyond Kinetica-1, CAS Space is developing the more powerful liquid-fuel Kinetica-2, which can lift up to 12 tonnes to low-Earth orbit and 7.8 tonnes to sun-synchronous orbit.
Kinetica-2 will be used to launch the Qingzhou cargo spacecraft to China’s Tiangong Space Station, and support its construction of internet megaconstellations.


The company is also working on a reusable rocket series named Lihong, Shi told the state-owned Science and Technology Daily earlier this month.
Of the 68 orbital launches attempted by China this year, 65 were successful.
Another failure involved the Hyperbola-1, a four-stage solid-fuel rocket developed by the Beijing-based Interstellar Glory Space Technology, or iSpace.
A partial failure occurred in March, when two Earth-moon navigation test satellites, DRO-A and DRO-B, launched aboard a Long March 2C rocket, failed to reach their intended orbit due to an upper-stage malfunction. The duo reportedly used on board fuel to reach the moon by August.


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All five previous Kinetica-1 launches have been successful, and delivered 57 satellites into orbit in total. Photo: Xinhua 

The Kinetica-1 Y6’s rocket’s failure to reach its designated orbit resulted in the loss of all payloads on board. Photo: Handout

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The mission patch for the GuoWang launch shows a unique “double-decker” layout inside the payload fairing. Photo: Handout

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China

Four-stage Kinetica-1 Y6 suffers ‘attitude instability’ three stages in, with makers CAS Space investigating causes


Four-stage Kinetica-1 Y6 suffers ‘attitude instability’ three stages in, with makers CAS Space investigating causes.


China's space programme

Space