“fts” sure pic.twitter.com/I66MM1niB0
— Michael France (@michaelsrockets) August 10, 2026
I didn’t know that Chinese rockets even had FTS. Looks more like a Max-Q failure to me.
[Update a few minutes later]
A Chinese CZ-7A was launched today from Wenchang, but the flight ended about ~80 seconds into the flight with an explosion. Reportedly it carried the military geostationary communications satellite ZX 4B.https://t.co/9J6Eo4VR9l pic.twitter.com/prMzeN2ofY
— Gunter Krebs 🚀 🛰 🇺🇦 🇬🇱🏳️🌈 (@Skyrocket71) August 10, 2026
[Update a while later]
It's hard to tell how much the video screen footage is slowed down, but here's a rough attempt at syncing two views: pic.twitter.com/oXiHZNYglK
— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) August 10, 2026
“We were seeing anomalies so for the purpose of safety we terminated the flight.”
“How?”
“We broke the rocket in half.”
“OK, thank you.”
It sure looks like structural failure at or near the interstage. Some say it might’ve failed at Max Q, others suggest wind shear is the culprit.
A loss of pressure in the upper stage, maybe?
It looked to me like the payload fairing failed at MaxQ, then the rocket had an aerodynamic breakup. We’ve seen this happen to various LVs over the years. Anyways, probably not Berger’s bloviating about the YF-100 engines.
By MaxQ, it could be the maximum dynamic pressure the integrated rocket could sustain, which may be less than what it needed to sustain.
From the look of it, I think we can lay the failure at the feet of some low-quality, Chinese knockoff Viagra.
These third-generation Chinese LVs have been flying for years, so I’d say manufacturing flaw rather than design problem. It’s also possible the payload caused the issue. That’s not unknown, globally. I think it was a recent Japanese launch had the satellite topple off the rocket.
Could be as simple as the payload not being securely fashioned, load CG shift, pin failure, and now two misaligned CGs with one accelerating faster than the other.
Anyone that played Kerbal 2 has dealt with this… crappy developers nerfing struts.
err, fastened…