Two leaders of the space race experienced unsuccessful launches

American and Chinese private rockets failed after launch

Two space launches carried out by American and Chinese private space companies ended in failure. It is noteworthy that the USA and China led the world in the number of space launches in the first half of the year, but the second half of the year started unsuccessfully.

Photo: Global Look Press

In the six months of 2024, the United States carried out 78 space launches. At the same time, the main share (75 launches or 96%) fell on the launches of private companies SpaceX Elon Musk (67 launches) and Rocket Lab (8 launches).

China carried out 30 space launches in the same six months, 9 of which were carried out by non-state companies. In total, the PRC and the USA account for 108 space launches out of 124 carried out in the world in January-June. For comparison, Russia completed 9 launches during the same time.

But the next launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on July 12 did not go according to plan. It was supposed to launch 20 Starlink v2 Mini satellites into orbit. However, during the operation of the second stage of the launch vehicle, a malfunction occurred and the satellites could not be launched to the specified altitude. Experts do not rule out that these vehicles will not be able to climb into the target orbit on their own.

Dozens more Falcon 9 launches are planned before the end of the year. But until the reasons for the unsuccessful launch are clarified, the flights will be temporarily stopped.

Failure The next launch of the Chinese Hyperbola-1 rocket from the private company i-Space has also ended. This is the second failure recently. Before this, as the channel reports, the Tianlong-3 rocket of the private Chinese company Space Pioneer “accidentally flew off the stand.”

As for the Hyperbola-1 (Shuangquxian-1) rocket, what During the flight, a malfunction occurred in the fourth stage of the launch vehicle. According to preliminary data, the rocket was supposed to launch three Yunyao-1 meteorological satellites into orbit. All of them, along with the rocket, were lost.

The launch was carried out from the Jiuquan Cosmodrome in the Gobi Desert.