(MENAFN- AzerNews) China on Saturday successfully launched the Zhuque-2 Y-3 carrier
rocket into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in
northwest China, Azernews reports Xinhua.
The carrier rocket blasted off at 7:39 a.m. (Beijing Time) and
sent three satellites -- Honghu, Honghu-2 and TY-33 -- into planned
orbit.
It was the third flight mission of the Zhuque-2 carrier
rocket.
The success of this launch mission has made Zhuque-2 China's
first commercial liquid carrier rocket to be successfully launched
in a row. In this mission, its technical maturity and stability
were further verified, its reliability met the requirements of
commercial launch delivery, and the rocket is closer to the phase
of mass production and delivery.
The Zhuque-2 is China's first medium and large-size liquid
rocket with liquid oxygen and methane as propellant. It is
independently developed by LandSpace, and provides low-cost and
highly reliable launch services to meet the commercial launch
requirements in multiple scenarios.
Liquid oxygen-methane fuel is a type of rocket propellant formed
by liquid oxygen and methane, the latter of which is the main
component of natural gas.
The rocket has a height of 49.5 meters and a body diameter of
3.35 meters. Its takeoff weight is about 220 tonnes, and its
takeoff thrust is about 268 tonnes.
Its carrying capacity is 1.5 tonnes for a 500-km sun synchronous
orbit, and the following improved version can reach a carrying
capacity of 4 tonnes for the same orbit, which can meet the needs
of low-Earth orbit satellite deployment and the launch of transport
spacecraft.
In Saturday's mission, the Zhuque-2 Y-3 rocket successfully sent
three satellites into the sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of
460 km.
The mission signifies that the rocket has carried out a
commercial multi-satellite launch mission, and the developer of the
rocket has made steady progress in its commercial operation of
rockets. It also accumulated data and flight experience for the
satellite's improvement and follow-up progress.
"Rockets are in the trend of large carrying capacity and low
cost in the commercial space era. The key to the industrialization
and commercialization of liquid rockets is to achieve low-cost,
large-scale manufacturing and delivery, and continuous and stable
launch," said Dai Zheng, deputy chief engineer and deputy chief
commander of Zhuque-2.
LandSpace has cultivated a large-scale delivery capacity of
rockets for commercial launch missions. It will continue to build
commercial launch vehicles featuring high reliability, low cost and
large capacity to sustain China's construction of a low-orbit
satellite network, and support the development of low-cost cargo
transport for the space station, according to Dai.
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