It was meant to be a routine static firing of a rocket attached to a test stand on the ground, but instead the Tianlong-3 first stage booster broke free and blasted off Sunday.
The unintended launch in China’s Henan province led to a flight of roughly a minute that ended with a large explosion in nearby hills about a mile from the test stand, according to Spacenews.
Footage of the catastrophic test result was captured and uploaded to Chinese social media.
The rocket stage can be seen leaving the ground and climbing into the air under its own power for about 30 seconds before flipping over on its side and beginning to free fall back to the surface. About a minute into the video a loud explosion is heard followed by a massive fireball on a nearby hillside.
The accident was captured from different angles and nearby settlements.
A statement from Chinese commercial space company Space Pioneer, which conducted the test, said that an investigation determined there had been no casualties from the accident. It said the test site is actually far from nearby Gongyi city, where the explosion was easily and dramatically visible. The company blamed the incident on a structural failure where the booster connects to the test stand.
The tests are part of the build up to an orbital mission for the Tianlong-3, which is comparable to a SpaceX Falcon 9.
Space junk from Chinese missions and failed launch stages have a bad habit of falling in rural Chinese areas. Just last week a rocket was seen dropping toxic chemicals over a populated area.
