Long March 7A Fails During Xinjishu Yanzheng-6 Mission

Long March 7A Fails During Xinjishu Yanzheng-6 Mission

China suffered a launch failure on the first flight of the new version of the Long March-7, the Long March-7A launch vehicle on Monday. Launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Center took place at 13:34 UTC from the LC201 Launch Complex.  According to Chinese news official statements about the launch, “Chinese space engineers will investigate the cause of the failure,” without giving any more details about the reasons or when the failure occurred.  At this time is not possible to determine if this failure will impact the near term orbital launch schedule of Chinese rockets. The problem seems to have surfaced when the 3rd stage was to operate and if this is the case, then this will probably lead to the grounding of the Long March-3B/G rockets.  The Long March-7A represents a new step in replacing the old families of hypergolic fuelled launchers that have been the workhorse of the Chinese space since its inception in the ’60s. Source