China's launch of a new heavy-lift rocket, the Long March-5 Y2, carrying what the government said was its heaviest ever satellite, failed on Sunday, official news agency Xinhua said.
The same rocket type had been expected to take China's latest lunar probe to the Moon this year and to return with samples. It is not clear how the timetable for that mission could be affected by the failed launch.
President Xi Jinping has prioritized advancing China's space program to strengthen national security and defense, and the government has stressed it is a purely peaceful initiative. "An anomaly occurred during the flight of the rocket," Xinhua said after the rocket blasted off early evening from the southern island province of Hainan.
"Further investigation will be carried out," it said, without elaborating. China's space program has largely operated without many major hitches, though it still has a way to go to catch up with the United States and Russia.
In late 2013, China's Jade Rabbit moon rover landed on the Moon to great national fanfare, but ran into severe technical difficulties. The US Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing other nations from using space-based assets in a crisis.
Before the launch attempt, Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the US Naval War College and an expert on China's space program, said the rocket would give China "heavy lift capabilities" needed to develop a large space station.
"More generally, the LM-5 provides China with capabilities to reach destinations previously out of reach, including interplanetary," she said.
China has announced plans to land a robotic probe on the dark side of the moon later this year and to reach Mars around 2020. All such future missions will depend on the LM-5 and space officials told reporters Sunday that the latest launch would help perfect the rocket design, including enabling it to send a space station into orbit "in a year or two." Originally announced in 2001, the LM-5 project initially suffered lengthy delays because of funding challenges and difficulties in developing new technologies for the first Chinese launcher to fully use liquid propellant.
The LM-5 finally made its debut last November, also at the newly built Wenchang site, and was successfully launched.
Its creators have said the LM-5's capabilities are now on par with the US-designed Delta IV rocket, long considered the most powerful in the world.
"The two rockets are at the same level ... though different propellant mix means the Delta is still a bit more efficient," He Wei, the LM-5's general designer, told CNN before the failed launch. "The Delta has had years of experience while this is only the second launch for the LM-5 — so we will keep modifying and improving to make our rocket more mature and reliable."
China was late to the space race — it didn't send its first satellite into space until 1970, just after the United States put the first man on the moon.
But in the decades since, China has pumped billions of dollars into research and training. Since 2003, China has staged a spacewalk, landed a rover on the moon and launched a space lab that it hopes paves the way for a 20-ton space station.