HELSINKI — Two Chinese spacecraft, possibly meant for orbiting the moon, may have been lost after a problem with the upper stage of a Long March rocket on Wednesday.
A Long March 2C rocket took off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 8:51 a.m. Eastern (1251 UTC) on March 13. The launch was not officially confirmed until early Thursday, when Chinese state media Xinhua reported it. announced the DRO-A and B spacecraft were not accurately placed into their planned orbit by the rocket’s Yuanzheng-1S upper stage.
It is currently unclear if the spacecraft and their mission can be saved. The orbit of the satellites is also unknown.
Xinhua did not provide details about the DRO-A and B satellites. However, it is believed that they were intended to go into a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the moon. If this is correct, DRO-A and B would have targeted a high lunar orbit moving in the opposite direction to the moon’s rotation around Earth.
DRO orbits are very stable and could be advantageous for exploration, scientific research, and infrastructure, such as serving as a waypoint, lunar observation, and communication.
The DRO-A and B satellites are designed to communicate with another satellite, named DRO-L, in low Earth orbit (LEO), according to an paper published in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration in 2023. The paper discusses high-precision relative navigation technology for a pair of satellites operating in DRO. China launched the DRO-L satellite, developed by IAMCAS under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, into LEO on a Jielong-3 rocket in February.
China had neither indicated plans for a lunar launch nor officially stated the purpose of the DRO-A/B satellites. However, indications that the launch was aimed at the moon include the fact that the U.S. Space Force’s space domain awareness group has not reported any new objects in LEO associated with Wednesday’s launch. Launches beyond LEO often take longer to be cataloged. The relevant airspace closure notices issued before launch also suggest a launch heading beyond LEO.
China tested out using a lunar distant retrograde orbit in 2022 with the service module from the successful Chang’e-5 moon sample return mission. This was part of the spacecraft’s extended mission. NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 1 mission entered DRO in November 2022.
The DRO-A/B mission does not appear to be a major part of China’s moon exploration program. It is instead a mission to test technology and orbits, which could play a part in its broader moon ambitions to establish moon navigation and communication infrastructure to support moon exploration.
The DRO-A and B satellites will also be relatively small, with the Long March 2C capable of launching around 1,250 kilograms to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO).
Launch tracking
The launch, despite being conducted quietly, was tracked. Footage of the Long March 2C taking off from Xichang was apparently uploaded to the Chinese social media site Douyin shortly afterwards.
The Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense posted on the X social media site that it detected and tracked a launch vehicle originating from Xichang traveling through its air defense identification zone (ADIZ) as it headed toward the West Pacific Ocean. The launch would have been expected as China issued airspace closure notices days ahead of the launch.
The first indication that the launch did not go as planned was the lack of official communication. China’s main space contractor, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), typically releases a report immediately after the payloads are placed in their intended orbits and confirmed to be operational.
A report of launch success is usually issued within minutes for launches to low Earth orbits, but it can take hours depending on the orbit. In the event of a launch vehicle failure, Chinese state media usually release a brief statement within hours of the launch.
The launch problem seems to be the most serious issue with Long March rockets since a launch failure in April 2020. Palapa-N1 The satellite for Indonesia was lost because of a Long March 3B third stage failure.
Since then, China had successfully completed well over 100 consecutive Long March launches. The anomaly may not significantly affect China’s broader launch plans, as the rocket’s first and second stages performed as expected, and the issue was isolated to the rarely used YZ-1S upper stage.
The hypergolic Long March 2C has proven to be reliable, with only one failure in its more than 70 launches since its first flight in 1982. Wednesday’s anomaly is the first instance where a Yuanzheng series upper stage has not completed its mission successfully.
CASC states that China aims to conduct around 100 launches by 2024. This includes the ambitious Chang’e-6 lunar sample return mission.
