China’s commercial Tianlong-3 rocket fails on debut launch

HELSINKI — The first launch of the Tianlong-3 rocket from Chinese commercial firm Space Pioneer failed Saturday after suffering an anomaly in its ascent phase.

The Tianlong-3 lifted off at 12:17 a.m. Eastern (0417 UTC) April 3 from the Dongfeng Commercial Aerospace Innovation Test Zone at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Amateur footage shared on Chinese social media captured the event, showing apparent issues during the ascent.

The launch was China's 19th orbital launch attempt of 2026, and the third failure. It follows the successful debut flight of CAS Space's Kinetica-2 kerolox rocket March 30 carrying a prototype cargo spacecraft. The two previous failures occurred in mid-January, with the loss of the first Ceres-2 solid rocket, while a Long March 3B rocket suffered a third stage anomaly.