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Deep Blue Aerospace
Chinese space launcher startup Deep Blue Aerospace suffered a landing failure in the latest test of its Nebula-1 when the engine cut off prematurely.
The first-stage rocket was about to touch down with about 1.6 ft. to go when the Thunder-R1 engine shut down, the company said in a social media post. A video of the 172-sec. flight conducted on Sept. 22 at the Ejin Banner spaceport in China’s Inner Mongolia was released by Deep Blue Aerospace. It showed the four landing legs properly deploying before thrust loss that caused the Nebula-1 to collapse on the landing pad and sparked a fire.
The company said it is still investigating the root cause of the malfunction but committed to attempt another high-altitude vertical recovery test in November.
Deep Blue Aerospace said this past weekend’s mission accomplished 10 of 11 test objectives, without providing further details.
Nebula-1 is designed to carry up to 2 tons of payload into low Earth orbit and eventually 8 tons.
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