China’s commercial and state space sectors suffered a historic double blow on Saturday when two separate rocket launches—one state-owned, one private—failed within hours of each other, marking the country’s first such single-day setbacks. The failures involved a China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) Long March-3B rocket and private firm Galactic Energy’s Ceres-2, but industry observers quickly framed the incidents as growing pains for a rapidly accelerating launch industry, drawing parallels to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its philosophy of learning from failure.
The day began with the malfunction of a workhorse Long March-3B rocket, which launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan province just before 1 a.m. local time. CASC, the state-owned aerospace giant, reported that the rocket’s third stage failed, resulting in the loss of the Shijian-32 satellite. This ended a success streak for the model that had lasted since its last failure in April 2020. Just over twelve hours later, at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, Galactic Energy’s new medium-lift Ceres-2 rocket crashed back to Earth on its maiden flight, destroying its commercial satellite payload. The company cited an “anomaly” and launched an investigation, stating, “We extend our sincerest apologies to all parties involved in this mission.”
While the twin failures sparked discussion on Chinese social media, with some dubbing the day “Black Saturday,” a notable shift in public and institutional reaction was evident. Science blogger Xiang Dongliang noted that in the past, a rocket failure would have been a major incident due to national pride, but now it’s become a more routine part of the news cycle. This normalization reflects China’s dramatic expansion in launch tempo; the country conducted a record 92 launches in 2025, sending over 300 satellites into orbit. Failures, while rare, are increasingly seen as an inevitable cost of rapid innovation and high launch rates.
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Industry commentary immediately drew comparisons to the developmental path of SpaceX, which experienced multiple Starship launch failures last year. After one explosion, SpaceX framed it as a learning opportunity, with Elon Musk calling it a “minor setback” on the path to making life multiplanetary. Echoing this sentiment, a science blog from the state-owned Jiefang Daily stated, “Launch failure is not the end, but a necessary stage in the industry’s maturation. The issue is never whether [a rocket] will fail, but whether a true fault-tolerance mechanism can be established.”
The Long March-3B, with over 115 missions since 1996, has a generally reliable record, though its maiden flight was China’s worst space disaster, crashing into a village and killing at least six people. Analysts like Daniel Marin, an astrophysicist and author of the Spanish space blog Eureka, suggested the recent failure would likely cause a pause for investigation but not significantly impact China’s broader schedule. Similarly, the Ceres-2 failure is not expected to majorly delay Galactic Energy’s development of its larger Pallas-1 reusable rocket, slated for a maiden flight this year.
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The failures come at a pivotal moment. Just two days prior, CASC concluded its annual work conference with a pledge to “further advance major projects such as manned lunar landing and deep space exploration” and to “make every effort to break through reusable rocket technology.” As noted by the Chinese science column Three Body Gravitational Waves, Saturday’s alarms offer a critical learning opportunity: “If we slow down the pace, conduct more thorough verification, and re-examine the boundaries between speed and stability, then this day’s failure will ultimately prove to be a worthwhile lesson learned.” For a space program aiming to become a comprehensive power, a costly “Black Saturday” may be a harsh but necessary step on that journey.
