On the afternoon of Feb. 1, the 2nd private commercial launcher of China’s Double Curve 1 failed to launch after an abnormality occurred after ignition and liftoff. (Photo source: Weibo)
On Feb. 1, Star Glory, the so-called “first private rocket in China,” failed to launch its rocket at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The rocket’s shell was filled with strange characters, and after the launch, it danced around in the sky, which was dubbed as “ghost painting” by netizens.
At 16:15 local Time on Feb. 1, the first and second sub-stages of China’s commercial launch vehicle, the Double Curve I Yao II, appeared to have an abnormal flight path before the rocket was separated from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center after ignition. The rocket crashed after leaving a series of turbulent flight trajectories in the sky. The exact cause of the rocket’s launch failure is still under investigation.
China’s Double Curve 1 Remote 2 launch vehicle left a disordered trajectory after liftoff. (Screenshot from Weibo)
According to a report by the Chinese media, the Double Curve-1 Yao-2 launch vehicle, developed by Chinese private rocket company Beijing Star Glory Space Technology Co. The rocket has a maximum diameter of 1.4 meters, an overall length of about 20.8 meters, a takeoff weight of about 31 tons, and a 700-km altitude sun-synchronous orbit capacity of about 150 kilograms.
In July 2019, this rocket completed its first launch, successfully sending two scientific research satellites into orbit, and thus Star Pride was named “the first private rocket in China” by the Chinese Communist Party‘s official media. This is the second launch of this rocket, but it failed miserably.
Photos of the rocket posted by Chinese netizens show that the outer shell of the launch vehicle, the Double Curve No. 1 Remote 2 rocket, is covered with peculiar and dense writing, called the “Xu Bing Tian Shu”.
Netizens posted a full view of the Double Curve 1 Remote 2 rocket. (Photo source: Weibo)
The day before the launch of the rocket, the Chinese Communist Party’s official media issued a propaganda article, claiming that the first and second sub-stages of the rocket were “independent works of art” created by artist Xu Bing, and that the four sub-stages of the rocket carried a pure metal magic cube engraved with Xu Bing’s representative work “The Book of Heaven”, which would accompany the four sub-stages of the rocket. After entering space, it will fly around the Earth for a few days to a few months before returning to the surface. The newspaper claimed that it was an “artistic practice”.
After the failed rocket launch, many netizens have been spitting and teasing about the “ghost painting” on the rocket.
Some netizens left comments saying, “This ghost painting, still want to go to the sky?” “Net fancy, have become a missile to the ground.”
There are also netizens posting flirtation: “tossed more than a year of satellite this sacrifice the book of heaven. Rub those one, not allowed to succeed.”
Some netizens also mocked: “Private more or less superstitious, since it is something in the sky, how can carry the so-called ‘heavenly book’ written by mortals, which is not offensive to the heavenly rule, no wonder it was beaten down.” “Carve a heavenly book that the heavens can not read, the heavens refuse to accept, beaten back and reissued, even the heavens are disgusted.”
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