Richard M: As for the break-up of that Long March 6 upper stage, it is becoming a habit, something China should address but will probably not.

And yet, surely it is in their own interests to put a stop to it. To clog up their own orbits with large clouds of dangerous debris is a counterproductive behavior. To put it mildly. This isn’t just a tragedy of the commons — it’s a looming tragedy for *you*, too.

And I cannot doubt that the thought has occurred to someone over there, not least in the peeps overseeing the Qianfan program. But if decisive efforts are being made to resolve the upper stage issues on the Long March lines, there is not much evidence of it yet.

Richard M: As for the break-up of that Long March 6 upper stage, it is becoming a habit, something China should address but will probably not.

Richard M: Thank you for following this issue up. It seems to me that yes, I should change the March 13th launch from a failure to a success. I will amend my posts and my launch count.

Thank you again!

Thank you for the reply.

I admit I was looking at just initial press reports on the Aug. 6 launch.

Checking around, especially on the NSF launch thread, it does seem that the satellites all deployed on Aug. 6, and the stage disintegrated on the following day (Aug. 7). Which is very bad, of course; but if this is the case, then it would seem, as you say, that we should call the 6A-Y21 Qianfan “Thousand Sails” launch on Aug. 6 a success. (Nonetheless, we sure as heck have to hope this sort of thing does not happen on every launch of the Qianfan constellation, given the number of launches we are talking about!!)
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=60890.20

Jonathan McDowell lists these satellites from the August launch as being in orbit, too:
https://www.planet4589.org/space/con/qf/log.html

So, I stand corrected. The August 6 Qianfan *launch* apparently was a success. It was the disposal that was a mess.

So now we have to consider how we characterize the 2C-Y86/DRO-A, DRO-B launch on March 13? It *looks* like there is the sense that the Chinese salvaged this mission. (Sources below on this.) I think I could go either way: success, or partial failure. But that leaves us with either a total of 65 successful Chinese launches, or 66. Which, I guess, would have to modify your total as well (albeit not by much).

Space News reported on the attempt to salvage the satellites’ lunar trajectory here:
https://spacenews.com/china-appears-to-be-trying-to-save-stricken-spacecraft-from-lunar-limbo/

Jonathan McDowell lists them as being active on his master satellite catalog:
https://www.planet4589.org/space/gcat/data/cat/satcat.html

Space News reported again on August 20: “Two Chinese spacecraft appear to have successfully reached their intended lunar orbits despite an initial launch issue that left them stranded in low Earth orbit.” They include some tracking data from Space Delta 2.
https://spacenews.com/chinese-spacecraft-appear-to-reach-lunar-orbit-despite-launch-setback/

Richard M: My post links to actual launch failures recorded by me, one of which was your #1. This however could be changed to a launch success, as the satellites did eventually reach their orbits.

#3 on your list was not a launch failure. It launched on August 6th and successfully deployed its satellites, by all reports. The upper stage then broke up shortly thereafter. If you have a confirmed source that confirms the break up occurred before deployment, please provide.

If #3 becomes a failure and #1 becomes a success, my count is still accurate. I would appreciate any help in finalizing these numbers.

I was looking through the launch pages on Wiki and Gunter’s site…

Wiki lists 68 total orbital launch attempts for China in 2024:
65 successes
2 failures
1 partial failure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_in_spaceflight#By_country

Counting up the raw total, mission by mission, I do see where the 68 attempt total comes from. But the Wiki editor who updated it did not source out how they calculated that, and I never take anything from Wiki at face value without double checking the source.

There are four problematic launches to look at for 2024 YTD:

1. 2C-Y86 on March 13. Long March 2C. The YZ-1S upper stage experienced a failure; but the two satellites, DRO-A and DRO-B, ended up reaching their intended orbits, albeit after a few months of maneuvering.

2. Yunyao-1 15-17 on July 10/11. Hyperbola-1. Beijing-based iSpace later issued a release stating that the rocket’s fourth stage suffered an anomaly. This seems to be an indisputable launch failure.

3. 6A-Y21 Qianfan “Thousand Sails” on Aug. 6. Long March 6A. Upper stage failure resulted in a cloud of “thousands” of pieces of debris. This seems to be an indisputable launch failure.

4. Kinetica-1 on Dec. 26/27. Already discussed above. Indisputable launch failure.

So the Wiki claim of a “partial failure” is a puzzle to me, unless this is a characterization of the Long March 2C launch on March 13. But if it is, then I am short one total failure for them.

I’d be open to the argument that the March 13 launch is a success, since the satellites reached their intended orbits, but a significant performance failure of an upper stage gets called a “partial failure” by many in the industry.

Anyway, the result here is that we have plausible arguments for 64 successful orbital launches, or 65 successful orbital launches. But the others are failures, even by Chinese admission. I might be inclined to accept the 65 total Wiki gives, but asterisk the March 13 launch as a “partial success” as far as the Long March 2C is concerned.