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China completes two launches today

November 13, 2019 at 8:30 am Robert Zimmerman Points of Information

In a space of three hours today China successfully completed two launches. First, a Kuaizhou-1A rocket, intended for commercial launches, placed a civilian Earth resource satellite into orbit. Then, a Long March 6 rocket put five remote sensing satellites into orbit.

The leaders in the 2019 launch race:

24 China
17 Russia
11 SpaceX
6 Europe (Arianespace)

With these two launches China has leap-frogged past the U.S. to take the lead in the national rankings, 24 to 23.

Leave a comment China, competition, engineering, Exspace, government, Kuaizhou-1A, Long March 6, policy, politics, spaceflight

Argentinian smallsat company signs 90 satellite deal with China

January 16, 2019 at 9:14 am Robert Zimmerman Points of Information

An Argentinian smallsat company, Satellogic, has signed a 90 satellite launch deal with China.

Satellogic’s constellation seems likely to compete with the remote-imaging satellite constellations operated by San Francisco-based Planet and Seattle-based BlackSky. The company promises to remap Earth at 1-meter pixel resolution every week and dramatically reduce the cost of high-frequency geospatial analytics.

The deal is officially signed with a so-called private launch company in China dubbed China Great Wall Industry, but that company merely acts as an agent for a Chinese government space operation, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.

What this means however is that China’s launch rate is going to go even higher in the next few years.

One comment China, commercial, competition, engineering, government, Long March 6, policy, politics, Satellogic, spaceflight

China launches three commercial remote sensing satellites

November 21, 2017 at 8:29 am Robert Zimmerman Points of Information

Early today China’s Long March 6 rocket successfully placed three commercial remote sensing satellites into orbit.

The Long March 6 is about comparable to Indian’s PSLV rocket, though slightly more powerful.

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Long March 6 launch a success

September 20, 2015 at 9:12 pm Robert Zimmerman Points of Information

The competition heats up: The first launch of China’s smallsat rocket Long March 6 was a success on Saturday, putting 20 satellites into orbit.

This rocket is part of a new family of Chinese rockets, modularly designed so that can be reconfigured depending on payload or mission. The big launch however will be next year, when they attempt the first test flight of the largest member of this family.

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China to launch new rocket today

September 19, 2015 at 7:54 am Robert Zimmerman Points of Information

The competition heats up: With the expected first launch of China’s new Long March 6 rocket today, this report nicely outlines the status of the country’s rocket program.

Like Russia’s Angara and SpaceX’s Falcon, the new generation of Long March rockets are modular and use the same rocket engine. This has reduced cost and allows for faster assembly. The launch today is the maiden flight of the smaller member of this family. The key launch will be that of the larger Long March 5, scheduled for next year. Capable of putting 25 tons in orbit (five more than Proton), this is the rocket they plan to use to launch the modules for their full-sized space station.

One comment China, commercial, competition, engineering, Long March 5, Long March 6, spaceflight