China's Long March 7A Rocket Explodes Seconds After Liftoff, ChinaSat-4B Satellite Lost

China's Long March 7A rocket failed shortly after liftoff from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan on Sunday night, destroying the vehicle and its ChinaSat-4B communications satellite payload in an in-flight anomaly — the first failure of the Long March 7A since its maiden flight in March 2020, according to Reuters and Xinhua.

Anomaly Inside 90 Seconds

The rocket took off around 8:02 p.m. Beijing time and broke apart less than 90 seconds after liftoff, with launch footage showing the vehicle disintegrating at relatively low altitude and velocity, meaning the payload did not reach orbit. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and spaceflight expert at Durham University, said the footage indicated the vehicle was destroyed low in the flight profile. Xinhua reported the rocket "experienced an anomaly during the flight," and China's National Space Administration did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The Long March 7A is a medium-lift variant of the Long March 7 family designed for high-orbit missions. It returned to flight after its 2020 debut and completed more than a dozen successful missions before Sunday's incident, according to Chinese launch records reviewed by Reuters.

Payload and Program Impact

The lost payload, ChinaSat-4B (Zhongxing-4B), was intended for a high geostationary orbit to carry voice, data, radio and TV broadcast services, in the same family as ChinaSat-4A, which China orbited in 2024. The failure is the seventh orbital launch failure worldwide this year and comes as China prepares the Chang'e-7 lunar mission, scheduled for launch in the second half of 2026 from Wenchang — though that mission flies on the separate Long March 5, which arrived at the launch complex in July for assembly and testing, and authorities have not indicated any grounding order affecting other vehicles.