Rocket carrying European orbital vehicle crashes after launch

What’s with this headline? This was a test launch with no payload that wasn’t expected to achieve orbit.

Disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.

The Spectrum is kinda unique - it's a LOX/Propane rocket (RP1/kerosene is traditionally more common, and methane is what the new hotness is).

From the footage that we have, it looks like we got maybe ~15 seconds of good flight before things got weird. It's not clear how relevant the "smoke" mentioned in the article is. Since the propellants (both of them in this case) are cyrogenic, some degree of boil off/venting may continue even after launch. For example, if you look at the New Glenn or any of the Starship launches, they continue to visibly vent well into ~20-30 seconds into flight.

Things appeared to have started going wrong around the time the announcer said "they're starting the pitch over", and we can see the rocket first start pitching, and then start rolling and then go belly up. It possible that it was a problem related to guidance/control.