Chinese startup Landspace suffered a launch failure after its Zhuque-2E rocket experienced an electrical anomaly during its sixth test flight, ending its run of successes.
Zhuque-2E took off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, China at 01:17 GMT on 15 August. Eight hours after the failure, the launch provider formally announced that “the rocket experienced a flight anomaly, resulting in the failure of the flight test mission”. It declined to identify the payloads aboard, although it did “sincerely apologize to the client for the failure to successfully complete this mission”.
Following an investigation, Landspace revealed that everything was working normally until 4 minutes 18 seconds into the flight. The first stage separated smoothly, and all systems were functioning normally after the second stage ignition. However, 258 seconds into the flight, the voltage on the second stage servo power busbar fell “abnormally” – making the rocket’s attitude unstable and triggering the onboard autonomous safety and control system to self-destruct.
The Zhuque-2E launch was China’s 45th orbital launch attempt of the year – it also marked the first failure of 2025. Courtesy: Landspace
The root cause of the flight’s failure was a short circuit. Specifically, it was “an arc discharge short circuit in the high-power 450V DC power supply bus of the secondary execution circuit driver in the low-pressure environment of the rocket’s second-stage flight, which caused a failure of the control actuator and led to the flight failure.”
The failure has brought an end to a run of four consecutive flights of the rocket series. In total, there have been six flights of Zhuque-2 and its -2E improved derivative: the first test flight (December 2022) was a failure; however, the next four launches were successful before this failure.
In its second test flight in July 2023, marking the first successful one, the Zhuque-2 rocket made history for its owners. Landscape became the first company worldwide to successfully launch a liquid methane oxygen rocket. One of the advantages of the liquid methane/liquid oxygen combination, dubbed ‘methalox’, is that it generally has a higher specific impulse (a measure of propulsive efficiency) than other propellant combinations (barring LOX/Liquid Hydrogen). It is also easier to store and keep cool. Notably, the startup beat several competitors, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, to the milestone. An enhanced version of the vehicle, Zhuque-2E, was used in the third test. It included an upgraded engine, replacing the earlier TQ-12 with a TQ-15A engine.
In its initial statement following the recent Zhuque-2E failure, LandSpace reiterated its commitment to manufacturing and launching liquid oxygen and methane rockets. However, the failure may yet affect the company’s plan to go public in early 2026.
