The Chinese company LandSpace launched its methane-powered Zhugque-2E rocket on Saturday (May 17), carrying a batch of six satellites to orbit.
Zhugque-2E lifted off Saturday at 12:12 a.m. EDT (0412 GMT; 12:12 p.m. in Beijing) from Site 96 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center’s Complex-43, in northwestern China’s Gobi Desert. The mission, carried out by LandSpace for commercial satellite maker Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute, known as Spacety for short, carried six Tianyi satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO).
This was the second launch of LandSpace’s Zhugque-2E rocket — the “E” stands for “enhanced”, indicating the rocket’s extended 13.8-foot (4.2-meter) payload fairing. In total, Zhugque-2E stands 155 feet (47 m) tall. Its first stage is powered by four Tiānquè-12A (TQ-12A) methalox-powered engines, with a vacuum-optimized TQ-15A engine powering the upper stage.
The six satellites, numbered Tianyi 29, 34, 35, 42, 45 and 46, will join a constellation of diverse Earth-observation spacecraft operated by Spacety in LEO.
The batch includes two optical remote sensing satellites, Tianyi 29 and 35; three space science experiment satellites, Tianyi 24, 45 and 46; and one remote-sensing synthetic aperture radar satellite, Tianyi 42.
This was the 27th orbital launch from China so far this year, with more than half a dozen lifting off in the month of May alone. Just two days following the LandSpace launch, another Chinese company, Galactic Energy, launched its solid-propellant Ceres-1 rocket from a ship at sea.
