China’s plans for a permanent space station remain firmly on track with the successful launch of its new heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket that will enable ambitious future missions, including a planned trip to Mars.
The towering rocket that blasted off on Thursday night from the China Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site will be used to launch components for the Tiangong-2 space station and other massive payloads.
China launched the Tiangong-2 precursor facility in September and sent up two astronauts in the middle of last month to live aboard it for 30 days. The station’s 20-tonne core module is to be launched in 2018, and the completed 60-tonne station is to come into full service in 2022 and last at least a decade.
Photo: Reuters
The Tiangong, or “Heavenly Palace,” stations are considered stepping stones to an unmanned mission to Mars by the end of the decade.
The Long March 5’s next mission will be lofting the robotic Chang’e 5 probe to the moon next year to land a rover before returning to Earth with samples.
The 57m two-stage rocket is China’s largest, capable of carrying 25 tonnes of payload into low-Earth orbit and 14 tonnes to the more distant geostationary transfer orbit, in which a satellite orbits constantly above a fixed position on the Earth’s surface. That is more than twice the carrying capacity of China’s most capable current rocket, the Long March 7.
It is also just slightly less brawny than the most powerful rocket in service, the United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV, although SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, planned for launching next year, is designed to carry a payload into low-Earth orbit of more than twice that size.
Not to be outdone, China is working on an even bigger rocket capable of lifting 100 tonnes of payload into low-Earth orbit, said Tian Yulong (田玉龍), the program’s chief engineer, at a news conference following Thursday’s launch.
That would put it in the range of the now-retired Saturn 5 rockets the US used in the Apollo lunar missions.
Unlike earlier rockets that used highly toxic fuels, the Long March 5 burns a more environmentally friendly and less expensive kerosene-liquid oxygen-liquid hydrogen mix. It has a takeoff weight of 870 tonnes and a thrust of 1,060 tonnes.
Wenchang, on the southern island of Hainan, is China’s fourth and newest launch site.
Although Thursday’s mission was mainly designed to test the reliability of the Long March 5, it also carried a satellite for testing technology used to observe space debris, new electric sources and electric propulsion, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Its upper section, the Yuanzheng 2, is designed to better launch multiple satellites and send them directly into orbit, Xinhua said.
In a joint congratulatory letter following the launch, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, the Cabinet and the commission overseeing the military praised the new rocket as “the pinnacle of innovation in carrier rocket science and technology.”
“Its successful launch ... marks a milestone in China’s transition from a major player in space to a major power in space,” the letter said, according to state media.
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