World's first methane-powered orbital rocket fails to launch, 14 Chinese satellites lost

The world's first methane-powered Zhuque-2 orbital rocket, developed by Beijing-based private company Landspace, failed in its mission and did not reach orbit, resulting in the loss of 14 satellites on the rocket.

It was launched Wednesday from the Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert. Fourteen satellites were scheduled to enter a sun-synchronous orbit and were sent into space for various purposes. However, there was reportedly a problem with the rocket's second stage engine, which caused the mission to fail and the satellites to be lost.

The first stage engines reportedly worked fine, but about five minutes after takeoff, a significant loss of altitude and speed was reported.

China has not yet made an official statement about the rocket launch. However, immediately after the launch there were reports on Twitter that the rocket launch had failed.

Landspace is already working on a second ZhuQue-2 rocket, although it is not yet known exactly when the second rocket will be launched.

Despite the mission failure, China's space program continues to grow rapidly in both the public and private sectors. In 2022, China successfully launched spacecraft into space about 60 times. The Tiangong orbital station was recently completed.

Chinese researchers have also recently proposed deploying a new system of six spacecraft in Venus-like orbits that would aim to detect and warn of potentially dangerous asteroids to Earth as soon as possible.