Failure of Chinese rocket setback for space program

BEIJING — The failure of China’s Long March 5 rocket deals a rare setback to China’s highly successful space program that could delay plans to bring back moon samples and offer rival India a chance to move ahead in the space rankings.

Experts say the still unexplained mishap shows that for all its triumphs, China’s space program is not immune to the tremendous difficulties and risks involved in working with such cutting-edge technology.

“China’s approach has been slow and prudent, trying to avoid this kind of ‘failure,’ even though they knew it was going to occur sooner or later,” Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert on China’s space program at the U.S. Naval War College, wrote in an email.

Authorities say the Long March 5 Y2 that took off Sunday in the second launch of a Long March 5 rocket, suffered an abnormality during the flight after what appeared to be a successful liftoff from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in the southern island province of Hainan.

The incident is under investigation and the authorities have yet to comment on possible causes, or any knock-on effects on the program as a whole.

In a testimony to the high respect China’s program now commands, the failure drew widespread commentary in the space community, including from SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk, who tweeted Sunday: “Sorry to hear about China launch failure today. I know how painful that is to the people who designed & built it.”

Nicknamed “Chubby 5” for its massive, 16-foot girth, the Long March-5 is China’s largest and most brawny launch vehicle, capable of carrying 25 tons of payload into low-earth orbit and 14 tons to the more distant geostationary transfer orbit in which a satellite orbits constantly above a fixed position on the earth’s surface.

That’s more than double that of the Long March 7, the backbone of the Chinese launching fleet, making it the linchpin for launch duties requiring such massive heft such as interplanetary travel.

First among those is the mission slated for November by the Chang’e 5 probe to land a rover on the moon before returning to Earth with samples — the first time that has been done since 1976.

China’s most technically demanding mission to date, it had been put off before because of funding and then technology, Johnson-Freese said.