China’s Nebula-1 Rocket Test Ends in Disaster: Lessons from the Latest Reusable Launch Vehicle Experiment

In China, in addition to the Long March rockets developed by the national space agency CNSA, private companies are trying to build other launch vehicles. The experiment of one of them ended in disaster.

Deep Blue Aerospace announced a “partial success” of the test. A Chinese startup is trying to build a reusable launch vehicle that looks like it works Falcon rocket developed by SpaceX 9. Its first module with valuable engines has been recovered after launch, which will allow its reuse and, as a result, reduce the costs of space missions.

During the first stage of testing Nebula – 1 rockets however, disaster struck. The Chinese rocket was supposed to take off and then land in a specific location. The module started without any problems.

The rest of the article is below the video

Most of the landings were also successful. The module confirmed its position in the air, hovered above the landing site at an altitude of about 200 meters, and then extended and locked the legs that stabilized it on the ground. When they landed, only one of the three engines was working as intended, and that was it to close prematurely caused to fall rockets and explode.

As he emphasizes in his essay Ad deep blue Aerospacethe test which lasted a total of 179 seconds was successful 10 of 11 levels plannedand no safety issues occurred during the test.

The first model of the Nebula-1 rocket has a diameter of 335 cm and is 21 meters high. As the creators of the rocket emphasize, so is his body 90 percent uniform elementformed at high temperatures in the printing process 3d.

The destruction of the rocket did not stop the test cycle. The next one will be done in November 2024. As it says service Location24Nebula-1 is not the only Chinese missile, built similarly to the SpaceX structure.

A similar test was successfully carried out recently by the startup Landscape, testing the first model of the future Zhuque-3 rocket. In this case, the attempt to recover the model after the start was successful. It ended in an accident uncontrolled rocket launch Tian-long-3 developed by the Chinese company Space Pioneer.