On September 21, 2023, the Ceres-1 (Yao-11) carrier rocket of Galaxy Power Aerospace Company carried out a commercial launch mission at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. It was ignited and lifted off at 12:59 minutes and 10 seconds. After flying for about 67.50 seconds, its attitude became unstable and the launch mission failed.Galaxy Power is the benchmark for China's private aerospace companies. After its Ceres 1 rocket successfully made its first flight on November 7, 2020, it won 9 consecutive victories in high-density launches. On September 5, 2023, it became the world's first private rocket to successfully launch from the sea.
Recently, Galaxy Power organized a review meeting to zero out the flight faults of the Ceres-1 (Yao-11) launch vehicle.
After deliberation, the review team unanimously believed that: the problem was accurately positioned, the mechanism was clear, the problem was reproduced, the measures taken were verified to be effective, and the inferences were drawn, it could be returned to zero.
The flight failure problem of the Ceres-1 (Yao-11) launch vehicle was located in the abnormal ablation of the expansion section of the first-stage engine nozzle. During the processing of the screw holes of the nozzle expansion section assembly, improper operation caused internal defects in the carbon cloth layer, resulting in abnormal ablation of the expansion section, which in turn led to an unstable first-stage flight attitude.
In response to the problem location, Galaxy Power guided the supporting production units to adopt a number of improvement measures such as improving process operating procedures, refining operating requirements, strengthening operating procedures training, optimizing production process inspection, etc., to further improve the quality control of the production process.
Galaxy Power said,Aerospace is a high-investment, high-risk undertaking, and any neglect of quality will cause irreparable losses.
The company will conscientiously implement improvement measures, steadily and reliably promote the follow-up go-around work, and further optimize the whole-process quality control, strengthen supervision, feedback and tracking of quality issues in the external production process, go deep into every production link, strictly control every detail, and ensure that subsequent launch missions are foolproof.