In a historic blow to its space programme, China suffered two rocket launch failures in a single day for the first time over the weekend.<\/p>\n
While Saturday\u2019s failed launches gained immediate attention on social media, with some describing the day as \u201cBlack Saturday\u201d, space observers said the setbacks were part of the growing pains the country\u2019s rapidly developing aerospace industry would inevitably experience.<\/p>\n
They also drew parallels with similar problems Elon Musk\u2019s firm SpaceX had experienced, as well as its principles of learning from its failures and continuing with a rapid launch schedule.<\/p>\n
The first failure involved a state-owned Long March-3B rocket, which blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan province at 12.55am local time on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The third stage of the rocket malfunctioned, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), resulting in the loss of a Shijian-32 satellite and ending a success streak that had lasted since the Long March-3B\u2019s last failure in April 2020.<\/p>\n
Later the same day, private company Galactic Energy\u2019s Ceres-2 rocket crashed back to Earth on its maiden flight, resulting in the loss of the commercial satellites it was carrying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a historic blow to its space programme, China suffered two rocket launch failures in a single day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[44269,1793,145791,64593,381,111663,18,1647,11399,19,17,11396,87308,133,145793,5684,451,2731,2730,145792],"class_list":{"0":"post-292409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-artemis-programme","9":"tag-beijing","10":"tag-black-saturday","11":"tag-ceres-2","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-china-aerospace-science-and-technology-corporation","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-elon-musk","16":"tag-galactic-energy","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-jiuquan-satellite-launch-centre","20":"tag-long-march-3b","21":"tag-science","22":"tag-shijian-32-satellite","23":"tag-sichuan-province","24":"tag-space","25":"tag-spacex","26":"tag-starship","27":"tag-xichang-satellite-launch-centre"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115922703822220718","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}