On September 22, the Jiangsu Deep Blue Aerospace Company conducted the first high-altitude test of their Nebula-1 rocket: a reusable and recyclable first-stage rocket body. The test was mostly successful – but once the rocket came back to Earth, it touched down a bit too strongly, leading to a complete explosion.
“According to the ‘Nebula-1 First High-altitude Vertical Recovery Flight Test Test Outline’, there are a total of 11 major test verification tasks. In this flight test, 10 of them were successfully completed and 1 was not completed,” the company wrote in a press statement on Weixin (WeChat).
The drone footage of the touchdown is fantastic. It shows the rocket hovering just above the launchpad, located at Deep Blue Aerospace’s Ejin Banner Spaceport in Inner Mongolia. As the rocket descends, the landing gear is deployed. Right after, the engine sputters a few times – and just like Wile E. Coyote realizing he is in the air, it falls down on the pad. The hit makes the rocket explode, launching debris around, and the drone capture the explosion in slow-mo.
This was the first high-altitude flight test for a reusable rocket, but it won’t be the last. A follow-up test is expected for November.
