Posted: Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 7:34 PM ET (2334 GMT)
The first launch of China's Kuaizhou-11 rocket ended in failure Friday. The solid-fuel rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 12:17 am EDT (0417 GMT) but suffered some kind of malfunction in flight. Video footage of the launch taken from a delayed stream indicates the rocket performed well for at least one minute, with unofficial reports of first and second stage separation. The failure resulted in the loss of the Jilin-1 video satellite and CentiSpace-1-S2. The Kuaizhou-11 is a larger version of the Kuaizhou-1A solid rocket, operated by Expace, a commercial spinoff from the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp., a state-owned missile maker. It's designed to place up to 1,000 kilograms into sun-synchronous orbit.

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