Skip to main content

China LandSpace's methane-powered rocket sends satellites into orbit


    Reporting by Roxanne Liu, Ella Cao and Ryan Woo; 

    Editing by Josie Kao, Grant McCool and William Mallard,

    Blog Editor - Amal Udawatta





The success could boost investor confidence in methane as a potential rocket fuel, which is deemed able to help slash costs and support reusable rockets in a cleaner and more efficient way.

Several private Chinese rocket startups have lined up test or commercial launches, aiming to prepare their products for the increasing demand in China's expanding commercial space industry, amid growing competition to form a constellation of satellites as an alternative to Elon Musk's Starlink.

Zhuque-2 Y-3 blasted off at 7:39 a.m. (1139 GMT on Friday) from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China's Inner Mongolia region, becoming the third LandSpace test rocket for Zhuque-2, and the first that succeeded in lifting satellites.

A second attempt, without real satellites, in July made LandSpace the world's first company to launch methane-liquid oxygen rocket, ahead of U.S. rivals including Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

The two launches showed Zhuque-2 is reliable enough for commercial launches, LandSpace said in a statement.

LandSpace said the three satellites reached 460-km (285-mile) sun-synchronous orbit, without providing details on the types and overall weight of them.

Zhuque-2 is capable of putting payloads totalling 1.5 metric tons into 500-km (300-mile) orbit, which LandSpace plans to increase to 4 tons in upgraded versions, the Beijing-based company said.

Zhuque-2 Y-3 carried two 50-kilogram test satellites developed by Chinese startup Spacety, one of which has adopted technologies from a company named Hongqing, according to a Spacety statement on Saturday.

Hongqing said in a statement the rocket also carried one of its test satellites, without disclosing the weight.

The two Hongqing-linked test satellites in Saturday's launch are designed to support forming a low-orbit satellite constellation, said Hongqing, in which LandSpace holds a stake.

LandSpace said last year the first launch last December failed, without specifying whether the test rocket, Zhuque-2 Y-1, carried any satellite payloads.

The eight-year-old startup said earlier this year it plans to provide clients with about three launches in 2024 and double that in 2025.

Chinese startup OrienSpace said it has scheduled the debut launch of its solid-fuel rocket, Gravity-1, in December. Deep Blue Aerospace, which is developing a reusable kerosene-fuelled rocket, aims to complete next year its first test of launching the Nebula-1 rocket to orbit and recovering it.

Galactic Energy on Tuesday launched its solid-propellant rocket Ceres-1 with two satellites into orbit, after a failure in September and a series of successful launches earlier.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did Homo sapiens outlast all other human species?

  From - Live Science By  Mindy Weisberger Edited by - Amal Udawatta Reproductions of skulls from a Neanderthal (left), Homo sapiens (middle) and Australopithecus afarensis (right)   (Image credit: WHPics, Paul Campbell, and Attie Gerber via Getty Images; collage by Marilyn Perkins) Modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) are the sole surviving representatives of the  human family tree , but we're the last sentence in an evolutionary story that began approximately 6 million years ago and spawned at least 18 species known collectively as hominins.  There were at least nine  Homo  species — including  H. sapiens  —  distributed around Africa, Europe and Asia by about 300,000 years ago, according to the Smithsonian's  National Museum of Nat ural History  in Washington, D.C. One by one, all except  H. sapiens  disappeared.  Neanderthals  and a  Homo  group known as the  Denisovans  lived alongside...
Post a Comment
Read more

New Zealand loses first naval ship to sea since WW2

  Aleks Phillips   BBC New  ,   Michael Bristow,    BBC World Service Edited by - Amal Udawatta US Navy HMNZS Manawanui capsized after running aground off the coast of Samoa The Royal New Zealand Navy has lost its first ship to the sea since World War Two, after one of its vessels ran aground off the coast of Samoa. HMNZS Manawanui, a specialist diving and ocean imaging ship, came into trouble about one nautical mile from the island of Upolu on Saturday night local time, while conducting a survey of a reef. It later caught fire before capsizing. All 75 people on board were evacuated onto lifeboats and rescued early on Sunday, New Zealand's Defence Force said in a statement. Officials said the cause of the grounding was unknown and will be investigated. Reuters All 75 people on board have now safely been rescued The incident occurred during a bout of rough and windy weather. Military officials said rescuers "battled" currents and winds that pushed ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Astronomers Find 21 “Dark” Neutron Stars Orbiting Sun-like Stars

  from - Sky & Telescope By Monica Young Edited by - Amal Udawatta New analysis has revealed 21 Sun-like stars in mutual orbit around dark objects of neutron star–like masses — rare systems that have escaped destruction by supernova. Most massive stars are born with at least one stellar sibling. But as the massive ones of these groups mature, they wreak havoc on their families. Yet astronomers have found some that have survived this tumult. Before exploding as a supernova, a massive star expands, sometimes engulfing any stellar companions. Or, even if the companion avoids being swallowed up, it may yet end up on its own: The supernova imparts a kick on the crushed core of the massive star, causing the newborn neutron star to escape the system. Many of the thousands of neutron stars known in the Milky Way are alone. But in a new analysis of data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, Kareem El-Badry (Caltech) and colleagues have found 21 survivors: “dark” neutron stars i...
Post a Comment
Read more