The world’s first methane-fueled rocket successfully reached orbit after launching on July twelfth. The private, but government-funded company beat the likes of SpaceX, Relativity, and Blue Origin.
Their first launch attempt got here in December 2022, which failed resulting from the 2nd stage vernier engines shutting down early. This was the world’s first methane-fueled rocket to launch past the Karman line.
LANDSPACE released more footage of the launch of Zhuque-2 Y2 https://t.co/2fCPKBZTGb pic.twitter.com/qaYFraTHkN
— China ‘N Asia Spaceflight 🚀🛰️🙏 (@CNSpaceflight) July 14, 2023
Following the failure of the primary mission, the methalox (Methane and Liquid Oxygen) race was still on, each Relativity and SpaceX made attempts to launch their methane-fueled rockets to space, but each failed. The Terran 1 had a successful first stage burn, but like Zhuque-2’s first attempt, suffered a failure through the 2nd stage burn in March 2023.
In April 2023, SpaceX gave it a go together with their Starship system, one very obvious difference being the large size difference between Zhuque-2 and the Terran 1. Despite 8 engines failing through the first stage burn, Starship attempted stage separation but was unable resulting from damage brought on by an explosive engine flame-out that took out the hydraulic power unit.
The Zhuque-2 is a medium-lift rocket, weighs in at 219 tonnes at lift-off and is powered by 4 TQ-12 methalox first stage engines and 1 TQ-12 vacuum optimized second stage engine able to launching ~6 tonnes (~13,000 lbs) to low Earth orbit and -4 tonnes (8,800 lbs) to a Sun-Synchronus orbit for future upgraded versions of the rocket.
The rocket stands 49.5 meters (162 feet) tall and three.35 meters (11 feet) in diameter, making it fairly close in size to the primary Falcon 9 version 1, but larger than Relativity’s Terran 1.
While that is a tremendous accomplishment, the opposite corporations developing methalox rockets all feature reusability in some form and may launch far more mass to orbit. Time will tell if Landspace can evolve this rocket to match the upper ambitions of the U.S.-based launch corporations.
Landspace could attempt third launch of this by the top of 2023.