As a Chinese rocket made its way upward into the sky, a sudden bolt of lightning struck it on Thursday.

The flash appeared around 30 seconds into its flight, shocking onlookers who cried out in awe.

The spacecraft was a Long March-3B rocket, and it launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern China. It was set to deliver a communications relay satellite to geostationary orbit.

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The mission remained successful as it delivered the satellite to its intended orbit, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

Has lightning ever struck spacecraft before?

This isn't a first — and there are two particularly prominent instances of lightning strikes in NASA history too.

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The start of the 1969 Apollo 12 mission was famously marked by not just one but two strikes of lightning making contact with the craft. Some instruments and sensors experienced effects from the strikes, but ultimately it didn’t affect the crew’s ability to land on the moon.

In 1987, a bolt struck a luckily unmanned craft, which resulted in much worse outcomes. A malfunction in one of the computers that guided the ship caused it to break apart, according to NASA.

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Since then, stricter rules on what weather conditions are required for launch have been put in place under the Lightning Launch Commit Criteria (LLCC) to prevent future incidents.

Content writer Ada Wood enjoys exploring the stories that science and climate teach us about our natural world and how it influences the way we live in it.