Hong Kong
CNN
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Suspected debris from a Chinese missile was seen falling to the ground above a village in southwest China on Saturday, leaving a trail of bright yellow smoke and sending villagers running, according to videos posted on Chinese social media and sent to CNN by a local witness.
The dramatic footage emerged online shortly after the launch of a Long March 2C launch vehicle at 3:00 p.m. local time Saturday (3 a.m. ET) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern Sichuan province.
The rocket sent into orbit the Space Variable Objects Monitor, a powerful satellite developed by China and France to study the most distant bursts of stars known as gamma rays.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed to establish the country as a dominant space power by increasing missions to compete with other major world powers, including the United States.
Saturday’s launch was declared a “complete success” by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the state-run contractor that developed the Long March 2C rocket.
CNN has reached out to CASC and the State Council Information Office, which handles press inquiries about the Chinese government, including its space agency, for comment.
A video posted on Kuaishou, a Chinese short video site, appears to show a long, cylindrical piece of debris falling over a rural village and crashing into a hillside, with yellow smoke billowing from one end.
CNN has geolocated the video, which will be shot from Xianqiao Village in Guizhou Province, adjacent to the Sichuan Province launch site to the southeast. The video was posted on Kuaishou from an IP address in Guizhou.
Other videos circulating on Chinese social media platforms analyzed by CNN show different angles of the falling debris. In one, villagers, including children, were seen running as they looked back at the orange trail in the sky, some covering their ears to the crash.
Some videos were taken down by Monday afternoon.
Witnesses on social media said they heard a loud explosion after the debris hit the ground. An eyewitness told CNN they saw the rocket fall with their “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 villager shortly after the launch, authorities said the town of Xinba, near the village of Xiangqiao, would carry out a “missile debris retrieval mission” from 2:45 to 3:15 p.m. local time on Saturday .
Residents were asked to leave their homes and other buildings an hour before the launch and disperse to more open areas to watch the sky. They were warned to stay clear of the debris to prevent damage from “toxic gas and explosion,” according to the notice.
Residents are also “strictly prohibited” from taking photos of the debris or “distributing relevant videos online,” the notice said.
No immediate injuries were reported by local authorities.
Quaishou
A screenshot taken from a video shows suspected debris from a Chinese missile falling over Xianqiao Village, Guizhou Province, China, after launch.
Markus Schiller, a missile expert and associate senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the debris appeared to be a booster from the first stage of the Long March 2C rocket, which uses liquid propellant consisting of nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH). .
“That combination always creates these orange smoke trails. It is extremely toxic and carcinogenic,” Schiller said. “Any living thing that inhales this stuff is going to have a hard time in the near future,” he added.
Such incidents happen frequently in China because of the location of the launch pad, he said.
“If you want to launch something into low Earth orbit, you usually launch it in an easterly direction to get an extra boost from the Earth’s rotation. But if you start in the east, there are definitely always some villages in the way of the first stage boosters.
Most of China’s missiles are launched from the country’s three domestic launch sites – Xichang in the southwest, Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert in the northwest, and Taiyuan in the north. Built during the Cold War, these bases were deliberately located far from the coast for security reasons.
In 2016, the fourth launch site, Wenchang, was opened on Hainan Island, the country’s southernmost province.
By comparison, NASA and the European Space Agency typically launch their rockets from coastal sites toward the ocean, said Schiller, who is also director of ST Analytics in Munich, Germany.
Western space agencies have also largely phased out the highly toxic liquid fuels for their civilian space programs, which China — and Russia — still use, he added.
Multistage missiles eject debris shortly after launch in trajectories that can be predicted prior to launch.
Before each launch, China’s civil aviation authority usually issues a notice to pilots, known as a NOTAM, to warn them of “temporary danger areas” where missile debris is likely to fall.
Debris from Chinese missiles has hit villages before. In December 2023, debris from a missile fell in the southern province of Hunan, damaging two houses, state media reported. In 2002, a boy in northern China was injured when fragments from a satellite launch fell on his village in Shanxi province.
“I expect we’ll see something like this for some time, for many years to come,” Schiller.
China has previously faced criticism from the international space community for its handling of debris from its runaway rocket boosters as they re-enter Earth.
In 2021, NASA criticized China for failing to “meet responsible standards” after debris from an out-of-control Long March 5B rocket fell into the Indian Ocean just west of the Maldives after re-entering the atmosphere.
