Hong Kong
CNN
—
What appeared to be debris from a Chinese rocket fell into the sky over a village in southwestern China on Saturday, leaving a trail of bright yellow smoke and sending villagers fleeing, according to a video posted on Chinese social media and sent to CNN by a local witness.
The dramatic footage was published online shortly after the Long March 2C rocket lifted off at 3pm local time (3am Eastern Time) on Saturday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.
The rocket carried into orbit the Space Variable Objects Monitoring Satellite, a powerful satellite developed by China and France to study the most distant stellar explosions known as gamma-ray bursts.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed to step up space missions and establish his country as a space power to rival other major world powers, including the United States.
Saturday’s launch was declared a “complete success” by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the state-owned contractor that developed the Long March 2C rocket.
CNN has reached out to the China National Space Communications Commission and the State Council Information Office, which handle inquiries from Chinese government media outlets including the China Space Agency, for comment.
A video posted on Kuaishou, a Chinese short video website, showed a long, cylindrical piece of debris falling in a rural village, crashing into the side of a hill, with yellow smoke billowing from one end.
CNN geographically located the video as having been taken in Xianqiao village, Guizhou province, which borders Sichuan province, southeast of the launch site, and was posted to Kuaishou from an IP address in Guizhou province.
Other videos circulating on Chinese social media platforms analyzed by CNN showed the falling wreckage from various angles, including one that showed villagers, including children, running away while looking back at an orange trail in the sky, and others covering their ears to the sound of the crash.
Some of the videos had been removed by Monday afternoon.
Witnesses on social media said they heard a loud explosion after debris hit the ground. One witness told CNN he saw the rocket fall “with his own eyes.” “There was a pungent smell and the sound of an explosion,” they added.
In a now-deleted government notice, reposted by a local resident shortly after the launch, authorities said Xinba town, near Xianqiao village, would carry out a “rocket debris recovery mission” from 2:45pm to 3:15pm local time on Saturday.
Residents were asked to leave their homes and other buildings an hour before the launch and spread out over a larger area to observe the sky. Residents were warned to stay away from debris to avoid harm from “toxic fumes and explosions,” the notice said.
According to the notice, residents are also “strictly prohibited” from taking photos of the rubble or “distributing related videos online.”
Local authorities did not immediately report any injuries.
Quick
A screenshot taken from the video shows what appears to be debris from a Chinese rocket that fell in the village of Xianqiao in China’s Guizhou province after launch.
Markus Schiller, a rocket expert and senior research fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the debris was likely the first-stage booster of a Long March 2C rocket, which uses a liquid fuel made of nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH).
“This combination always leaves a trail of orange smoke and is highly toxic and carcinogenic,” Schiller said, adding that “any living thing that inhales this substance will suffer in the near future.”
He said such accidents are common in China due to the location of the launch site.
“If you want to launch something into low Earth orbit, you normally launch it eastward to get that extra boost from the Earth’s rotation. But if you launch eastward, you’re bound to have some villages in the path of the first stage booster.”
Most of China’s rockets are fired from three inland launch sites: Xichang in the southwest, Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert in the northwest, and Taiyuan in the north. Built during the Cold War, the bases were deliberately located far from the coast due to security concerns.
A fourth launch site, Wenchang, opened in 2016 on Hainan island, China’s southernmost province.
By comparison, NASA and the European Space Agency typically launch rockets out to sea from coastal areas, said Schiller, who also sits on the board of directors of ST Analytics in Munich, Germany.
Western space agencies are phasing out highly toxic liquid fuels in their civilian space programs, but China and Russia still use them, he added.
Multi-stage rockets release debris soon after liftoff along a trajectory that can be predicted before launch.
China’s civil aviation authorities typically issue notices, known as NOTAMs, before a rocket launch, warning pilots to be aware of “temporary danger areas” where rocket debris may fall.
Debris from Chinese rockets has hit villages before. In December 2023, rocket debris fell on southern Hunan province, damaging two homes, according to state media. In 2002, debris from a satellite launch fell on a village in northern China’s Shaanxi province, injuring a boy.
“We expect this to continue for many years to come,” Schiller said.
China has previously faced criticism from the international space community for how it handled debris when an out-of-control rocket booster re-enters Earth.
In 2021, NASA slammed China for “failing to meet responsible standards” after debris from an out-of-control Long March 5B rocket crashed into the Indian Ocean west of the Maldives after re-entering the atmosphere.
