While there were no casualties, the incident once-again raises serious concerns about China’s approach to rocketry.

“This is really an egregious event,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astronautics expert at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “It’s quite shocking they would have made such a basic mistake.”

Space Pioneer, a private Chinese company also called Beijing Tianbing Technology Co, had been performing a static fire test of its Tianlong-3 launcher when the incident occurred. The rocket, seen as a competitor to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in the US, will be 71 meters (233 feet) tall with a reusable first stage that returns for a ground landing.

Sunday’s test was a firing of the first stage of the rocket, ahead of a first possible launch later this year. A static fire test, a norm in spaceflight, is when a rocket is mounted on a stand and held securely to the ground with hold-down clamps while its engines fire, to test the rocket is in working order before a launch attempt. “We do these tests because sometimes there are problems that we haven’t found in previous testing,” says Phil Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida.

Disaster struck for Space Pioneer, however, when its clamps failed, leading the rocket to take to the air instead of remaining on the ground. Video footage showed the rocket climbing into the sky before it rotated onto its side. The exploding fuselage then fell back to Earth as it started to break apart, its engines still firing, and crashed into a hillside 1.5 kilometers (one mile) from the test site near the city of Gongyi in central China, which has a population of 800,000 people.

“We sincerely apologize for the incident,” the company – which has raised more than $400 million in five years – said in a statement. “We deeply regret disappointing everyone who has supported and followed us.” They added that there were “no casualties” from the event, and said they would compensate any residents that had experienced property damage from the incident.

In a previous statement, the company said the cause of the incident had been a “structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench.” It added the rocket was “the most powerful power system test of any carrier rocket currently under development” in China, with the ability to lift 17 tons of mass to orbit.

It’s unclear what, if any, investigation will result from the incident. However, it is not the first time that international eyes have been on China for its approach to rocket launches. Just last week, video was shared of the first stage of a Chinese government Long March 2C rocket falling near a village in southwest China while expelling toxic gas.

says Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation in Washington DC.

In the US, rocket launches take place over the ocean to ensure falling debris does not endanger people, but China uses several inland launch sites that result in dangerous events like this, although it does plan to move launches to an ocean launch site on the island of Hainan. Static fire test failures, meanwhile, are rare but not unheard of; one of the most notable in the US was in 1952, when a Viking sounding rocket broke free from its clamps and crashed several kilometers from its test site in New Mexico. “That was, of course, in the more cavalier days of the 1950s,” says McDowell.

Were a failure like Tianlong-3 to occur today in the US, the ramifications for the company would be severe. “They certainly would have their launch license pulled,” says Rand Simberg, a space consultant based in Wyoming. “There would be a serious investigation.” Metzger said that it’s unlikely a US regulatory body would have allowed a static fire test so close to a populated area as Space Pioneer’s test. “I'm shocked at how close they were to neighbouring communities,” he says.

The outcome of the incident is likely to be “at the very least, a delay” for the first launch of the Tianlong-3 rocket, says Jean Deville, a space analyst in France that monitors China’s space activities. An orbital launch had been scheduled for June or July this year, but the static fire test will now need to be repeated “likely in a more remote location”, meaning a first launch could now be at the end of 2024 or early 2025, says Deville.

For commercial launch in China, “this accident will likely lead to additional regulations which will help prevent such accidents in the future,” said Deville. As for any repercussions for Space Pioneer, “it's unclear at this stage and depends on the outcome of the investigation,” he says. “It seems like Space Pioneer got lucky. Had the rocket gone in a different direction, things could have ended very differently.”

You can track China's spaceflight activities on the Supercluster App's live Launch Tracker, interactive Astronaut Database, and Stations Dashboard where we monitor traffic and crew aboard the Tiangong Space Station.