New carrier rocket built by Beijing company fails in maiden flight

The maiden flight of the Ceres 2, a new model of solid-propellant carrier rocket, built by Beijing-based private rocket maker Galactic Energy, failed on Saturday afternoon.

The rocket blasted off at 12:08 pm at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, attempting to deploy six commercial satellites.

However, its flight became abnormal soon after liftoff, leading to a crash on the ground, according to footage taken by spectators.

Engineers are investigating the cause, the company said.

According to Galactic Energy, the Ceres 2 has three solid-propellant core stages and a liquid-fueled upper stage, and weighs 100 tons. It is capable of transporting satellites with an overall weight of 1.6 tons to a low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers, or 1.3 tons of payloads to a 500-km sun-synchronous orbit.

It boasts a good carrying efficiency and can be launched both on land and at sea, the company said.

The first Ceres 2 was manufactured and underwent functional checks in Sichuan province's Ziyang and Shandong province's Haiyang.

This is the second failure on Saturday, following the loss of a Long March 3B rocket launched early morning from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province.