According to SpaceNews, on April 3, the maiden launch of the Tianlong-3, China’s most powerful commercial rocket to date, ended in failure minutes after liftoff. Within hours, shares across the country’s commercial space sector fell sharply and in a bakery somewhere in China, a custom-ordered celebration cake sat untouched, its message of triumph rendered obsolete.
The episode laid bare the gap between ambition and execution in Beijing’s push to build a domestic challenger to SpaceX. The cake unintentionally captured that tension more vividly than any earnings report.
China’s most powerful commercial rocket fails minutes after liftoff
At 12:17 p.m. on April 3, the Tianlong-3 lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, a state-run facility in the Gobi Desert that has supported China’s space program since the 1960s.
The rocket did not fly for long.
Its trajectory deviated shortly after launch. Tianspace, the Beijing-based company behind the vehicle, later confirmed an “anomaly” during flight and said the mission had failed. Engineers are still investigating the cause.
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The Tianlong-3 had been positioned as China’s answer to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. With a diameter of 3.8 meters and a liftoff mass of 590 tonnes, it was designed to carry up to 17 tonnes to low Earth orbit and 14 tonnes to sun-synchronous orbit, the backbone of modern satellite constellations. Tianspace promoted it as the first Chinese commercial rocket capable of launching more than 30 satellites in a single mission, a threshold that signals true mass-deployment capability.
The company said its performance targets were comparable to Falcon 9.
Two years of setbacks before the rocket ever left the ground
The troubled debut followed a long chain of setbacks.
In June 2024, Tianspace conducted a hot-fire test of the rocket’s first stage in Gongyi, Henan province. The nine-engine cluster ignited successfully and reached 820 tonnes of thrust. Then the structure anchoring the rocket to the test stand failed.
The first stage broke free.
It rose briefly into the air before crashing into a forested mountain area about 1.5 kilometers away, where it disintegrated on impact.
Over the following year, Tianspace implemented 127 reliability improvements. These covered structural reinforcement, pressurization redundancy, onboard fault detection, engine health monitoring, and backup systems for ground operations. Engineers carried out 13 additional verification tests.
In September 2025, the company completed a full-system engine test at a sea-based facility in Haiyang, Shandong province, setting a new thrust record for China’s commercial launch sector.
The rocket’s first flight had originally been scheduled for July 2024. The timeline, however, slipped by nearly two years. The final launch window moved again, from April 2 to April 3.
The outcome did not change.
A pre-ordered victory cake becomes the symbol of the failure
The images spread quickly.
Photos circulating on Chinese social media showed a celebration cake sitting unclaimed in a bakery. Its surface was decorated with a message that read: “New rocket knocks at heaven’s gate, spring winds carry news of victory. Warm congratulations: Tianspace Tianlong-3 Mission One, maiden flight a complete success.”
The Tianspace logo appeared repeatedly around the cake.
The bakery, apparently unable to reach whoever placed the order, posted a notice asking for it to be collected.
Online reactions followed with predictable speed.
“The biggest victim of the Tianlong-3 failure has appeared,” one user wrote. Another added, “When you order a cake, don’t write on it in advance.”
Others suggested salvaging the situation. “Smooth it out and reuse it.” “Call it a rehearsal.” “No need to waste the food.” One commenter offered a more procedural critique: major engineering projects, they argued, should prepare for both outcomes, with statements ready for success and failure alike.
“A cake should follow the same logic,” the commenter wrote.
A reply came quickly: “But you can’t decorate one that says ‘congratulations on failure.’”
The failure sent China’s commercial space stocks into freefall
Markets reacted almost immediately.
By the afternoon of April 3, shares tied to China’s commercial aerospace sector had dropped across the board. Zhongheng Design hit its daily trading limit and was suspended. Feivo Technology fell more than 10 percent at one point. Zhongchao Holdings dropped more than 9 percent. Shenjian Co., Guanglian Aviation, and Juli Suoju each declined more than 7 percent.
Tianspace was founded in 2019 and has raised multiple rounds of funding.
In October 2025, the company filed for an initial public offering in Jiangsu province, with China International Capital Corporation acting as sponsor. That same month, it completed Pre-D and D funding rounds totaling nearly 2.5 billion yuan, roughly $340 million. Investors included Guoyu Gaohua, Jigang Group, Orient Asset Management, Shenwan Investment, and Bank of China Asset Management.
The company had told investors it planned to carry out more than 30 launches annually within three years of the Tianlong-3’s debut.
That projection now rests on a vehicle that has failed twice. Once during ground testing. Once on its first flight.