HONG KONG — China has conducted a pair of orbital missions to launch a commercially developed flat-panel communications satellite and a brand new batch of spy satellites.
A Long March 2D rocket lifted off from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China at 4:02 p.m. Eastern, July 26. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) stated that the payload was a Yaogan-36 satellite. No further information on the payload was provided.
The mission likely carries a trio of the classified spacecraft, joining 4 earlier groups of Yaogan-36 triplets in 500-kilometer-altitude orbits with inclinations of 35 degrees. The spacecraft are possible signal-intelligence satellites.
China has five groups of Yaogan-35 satellites in similar orbits. It’s unclear what capabilities distinguish the 2 designations.
That mission followed the launch late July 22 of the primary stackable, flat-panel communications satellite for Chinese business firm GalaxySpace.
A Long March 2D was once more used, lifting off from Taiyuan spaceport in northern China at 10:50 p.m. Eastern. Also aboard were the Skysight AS-1, 2 and three satellites for Skysight Technology Co., Ltd.
Lingxi-03 carries a multi-beam digital payload with an information capability of tens of gigabits per second, based on GalaxySpace. It also uses a versatile solar panel with a thickness of 1 millimeter. Galaxy Space previously launched six test satellites in March 2022.
The stackable satellite technology and other qualities of the brand new Lingxi-03 satellite will provide technical support for the rapid deployment of China’s low Earth orbit communications megaconstellation, GalaxySpace’s Hu Zhao told Chinese state media.
The corporate can even speed up the batch development of flat panel stackable satellites, and tackle core technologies reminiscent of phased array antennas for direct satellite-to-device communications and digital processing payloads, Zhu Zhengxian, chief technology officer of GalaxySpace, told Xinhua.
China’s national plans for LEO comms is constructing a constellation named Guowang, consisting of as much as 13,000 satellites. The primary batch of satellites is predicted to launch later this yr.
Skysight AS-1 is an artificial aperture radar satellite built by CASC’s DFH Satellite Co., Ltd. The latter pair were built by GalaxySpace and carry optical and infrared distant sensing payloads respectively.
The rideshare launch was facilitated by CASC’s China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC). The Long March 2D can carry greater than 3,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit, or 1,300 kg to a 645-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit.
The July 22 launch from Taiyuan also featured grid fins at the highest of the primary stage for helping to constrain the landing zone of the spent stage downrange. Three of China’s 4 national spaceports are positioned deep inland, meaning costly evacuation and recovery procedures are needed, and falling space debris occasionally falls inside inhabited areas.
The launches marked the 149th and a hundred and fiftieth consecutive successful Long March launches, based on CASC. The run of successes stretches back to a Long March 3B failure in April 2020. That launch saw the lack of the Indonesian Palapa-N1 communications satellite.
China has now launched a complete of 480 Long March rockets, CASC says. The primary, a Long March 1 rocket carrying DFH-1, launched from Jiuquan within the Gobi Desert in 1970. CASC plans greater than 60 launches this yr, with the above launches marking 29 and 30 for 2023. Other actors could add an additional 20 or more orbital missions in what appears to be a breakthrough yr for China’s business launch sector. Firms CAS Space, iSpace, Expace, Space Pioneer and Landspace have all reached orbit to date in 2023. These include first business liquid propellant launch successes, achieved by Space Pioneer and Landspace.