BEIJING — China’s Long March 7A rocket failed shortly after liftoff from the Wenchang space launch site in southern Hainan province on Monday, destroying the ChinaSat-4B communications satellite it was carrying, after an in-flight anomaly, according to China’s state news agency Xinhua.
The rocket lifted off at 8:02 p.m. Beijing time (1202 GMT), but the mission was unsuccessful, Xinhua reported. The cause of the failure remains under investigation, and Chinese authorities have not publicly identified a technical fault.
Launch footage showed the vehicle breaking apart at relatively low altitude and speed, according to Jonathan McDowell, an honorary professor at Durham University and a member of the Center for Space Environmentalism. He said the rocket was destroyed before either the satellite or debris could reach orbit.
The payload was identified as Zhongxing-4B, or ChinaSat-4B, by China National Radio in a report that was later removed from a page hosted by the Baidu search engine. Reuters' assessment of available evidence identified the launcher as the Long March 7A, also known as a modified Long March 7.
ChinaSat-4B belongs to the same series as ChinaSat-4A, which China launched in 2024 and described as providing voice, data, radio and television transmission services. It was not immediately clear whether the lost satellite was intended to provide the same services or serve the same customers.
The failure was the first for the Long March 7A since its maiden flight in March 2020, when an in-flight malfunction also caused a mission failure. The rocket subsequently returned to flight and completed more than a dozen successful missions before Monday’s launch, according to Chinese launch records.
The incident comes as China expands its space programme and prepares several major missions. The Long March 7A is a medium-lift vehicle primarily designed for high-orbit missions, while China’s large low-Earth-orbit satellite deployments use other launch vehicles.
China is also preparing the Chang’e-7 lunar mission at Wenchang, with an official launch target in the second half of 2026. The mission will use the larger Long March 5 rocket, a different vehicle from the Long March 7A.
The investigation into Monday’s failure is expected to determine whether the problem was specific to the Long March 7A or warrants broader checks of shared components, manufacturing processes or launch-site operations. As of Aug. 13, Chinese authorities had not announced a definitive cause.
