On February 1 at 08:15 UTC, an i-Space Hyperbola-1 rocket took off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.

Unfortunately, the launch was far from successful with the vehicle going off course in dramatic fashion shortly after liftoff. Several hours after launch, i-Space put out a press release stating that an investigation into the failure had begun.

This was the second launch of the Hyperbola-1 rocket. The first launch in July 2019, also from the Jiquan Satellite Launch Center, was successful and reportedly placed several payloads into orbit.

While this was technically the second launch of a Hyperbola-1 rocket, the first and second rockets were very different.

The launch vehicle seems to have been redesigned from the first flight to the second flight. The first launch vehicle, Y1, was 20.8 meters tall and the diameter tapers from 1.4 m at the bottom to 1.2 m at the top. Meanwhile, the second launch vehicle, Y2, is taller — coming in at 24 meters tall. It has a consistent diameter of 1.4 meters.

With all these external changes, we can only guess that things are also different inside the rockets.

One additional factor in this launch, which the internet was quick to meme, was the inclusion of Xu Bing’s art on the side of the rocket. Designed to look like Chinese Song-style font from the Ming dynasty, the beautiful characters actually meant nothing, leading folks to make jokes along the lines that when the sky can’t read your rocket, it may reject it. We’ll link to more of Xu Bing’s work in the show notes and hope to see the inclusion of more art on future missions.

Xinhua News Agency previously reported that, if successful, Y2 would have become “the first privately-owned commercial launch vehicle model successfully launched in China.” While this wasn’t a successful launch, we look forward to seeing i-Space return with a new vehicle and new launch attempt in the not too distant future.

More Information

i-Space press release (Chinese)

Xinhua Net article (Chinese)

Fangzhou 2 info page (Gunter’s Space Page)