HELSINKI — China appears to have lost an unknown payload after a Long March 7A rocket exploded less than 90 seconds into flight, according to amateur footage.

The Long March 7A lifted off at around 8:00 a.m. Eastern (1200 UTC) August 10 from Wenchang, Hainan island, as indicated in advance by airspace closure notices. Amateur footage from the launch near the coastal spaceport and restreamed via Youtube shows an explosion around 85 seconds into the flight.

Chinese authorities had yet to report the incident as of time of reporting. It is unknown if the explosion was caused by an anomaly or a triggering of the flight termination system.

State broadcaster China National Radio (CNR) published a brief report of the expected mission around liftoff, naming the payload as Zhongxing-4B. Low numbered Zhongxing satellites are thought to be satellites for military communications.

The satellite series matches the geosynchronous orbit profile for the Long March 7A, which is increasingly used for such launches, alongside the older, hypergolic Long March 3B. The Long March 7A debuted in March 2020 in a mission that also ended in failure following an explosion. The launcher had since proven its reliability with a series of successful flights, most recently launching the Tianlian-3 (01) satellite towards GEO in late July.

It is not immediately clear how or if the failure will impact upcoming missions. The rocket first stage and side boosters use YF-100 kerolox engines which are also used on the Long March 5. The Long March 5 is currently scheduled to launch the Chang’e-7 robotic lunar south pole landing mission Aug. 24. The standard Long March 7 for low Earth orbit is used to launch cargo to the Tiangong space station once every eight months, with the latest launching in May.

The second Zhuque-3 rocket is scheduled to launch later Aug. 10 from the commercial zone at Jiuquan, with a planned second orbital booster recovery attempt.

The launch was China’s 56th orbital launch attempt of 2026, and the fourth failure. Previous failures involved the Long March 3B and debut of the Ceres-2 solid rocket in January, and the loss of the debut Tianlong-3 rocket in early April.