China’s commercial rocket company iSpace suffered a launch failure on Wednesday evening, the latest failure for the company. The Hyperbola-1 four-stage solid rocket launched from the Jiuquan Spaceport in the Gobi Desert at 19:40 Eastern (23:40 UTC) on July 10. State media Xinhua later announced that the mission had failed.

Beijing-based iSpace later issued a statement saying the rocket’s fourth stage experienced an anomaly. The company said the specific causes of the failure would be announced as soon as possible after detailed investigation and verification. The statement did not disclose the name or nature of the payload lost during the flight.

Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Ltd, or iSpace, made history in 2019 when it became the first private Chinese company to launch its solid-fueled Hyperbola-1 into orbit. However, the rocket failed three times in a row after the feat.

The company rebounded with two successful flights in 2023 but now faces another setback. The loss could raise concerns about China’s commercial launch industry following the recent catastrophic explosion of the Space Pioneer static fire, in which a fully fueled first stage was accidentally ejected from a test stand in Gunyi, Henan province.

Commercial plazas are receiving increasing support from China’s central, provincial and municipal governments, with a series of low-orbit communications mega-constellations expected to provide capabilities for commercial medium- and heavy-lift launch vehicles.

iSpace is also looking beyond solid rockets. It launched and landed a test product for its Hyperbola-3 methane-oxygen rocket last November. Despite an already crowded field of competitors, new players are still emerging in China’s commercial startup sector. The latest appear to be Dahang Yueqian, which was founded in February, or Cosmoleap.

This week, Cosmoleap released a concept image of the planned rocket. The technical image suggests plans to develop a nine-engine metalox rocket that will perform a power fall and seemingly be captured in a manner similar to SpaceX’s plan to recover the Starship Superheavy boosters.

More specifically, Chinese firms like Landspace are planning the first launch of their reusable methane rockets as early as 2025. The firm has already conducted vertical takeoff and vertical landing tests for its stainless steel Zhuque-3 rocket.