--- title: "Chinese Rocket Booster Crashes Near School, Explodes" description: "One of China's Long March 4B rocket boosters exploded in a cloud of orange smoke not far from a school after a successful launch." date: "2020-09-08" modified: "2020-09-08" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/chinese-rocket-booster-crashes-near-school-explodes" categories: - "Off-World" - "Space" tags: - "china" - "long march space rockets" - "the digest" --- # Chinese Rocket Booster Crashes Near School, Explodes ![One of China's Long March 4B rocket boosters exploded in a cloud of orange smoke not far from a school after a successful launch.]() *\Image: Weibo\* ## Booster Slip Up China successfully launched a high resolution optical observation satellite on top of a Long March 4B rocket on Monday. But as videos uploaded to Chinese social media show, one of the rocket's boosters fell back down to Earth — and exploded in a huge cloud of orange smoke not far from a school, as [*Space.com* reports](). https://twitter.com/LaunchStuff/status/1302933386990891008 ## Big Orange Cloud [Footage]() on Chinese social media network Weibo shows the first stage of the Long March 4B rocket erupting into a massive orange cloud near Lilong village, in the Shaanxi province. As *Space.com* reports, the footage appears to be taken from a school yard, with children audible in the foreground. Making matters worse, the Long March rocket's propellants are quite toxic — a possible health hazard. ## Bad Run It's not the first report of Chinese rocket parts plummeting out of the sky. In May, the core stage of China’s gigantic Long March 5B rocket, essentially a whopping 37,000 pound piece of shrapnel, [made its uncontrolled reentry]() into Earth's atmosphere. Pieces of the core stage eventually [appeared to have crashed down]() on the Ivory Coast in Africa. The satellite, called Gaofen 11, is capable of showing features as small as just three feet across back on the ground. [According to state media](), those images will be used for city planning, road network design, and other infrastructure planning projects. **READ MORE:** [Chinese rocket booster appears to crash near school during Gaofen 11 satellite launch]() \[*Space.com*\] **More on Chinese rockets:** *[China Just Launched a Mysterious "Reusable Test Spacecraft"]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()