China's methane-fueled rocket puts satellite into orbit

This is a major milestone in the private Chinese rocket startup's mission to test whether its methane and liquid oxygen-powered vehicle is ready for commercial launches.

The success could boost investor confidence in methane as a potential rocket fuel, which is seen as potentially cutting costs and enabling rocket reuse in a cleaner and more efficient way.

China's nuclear fuel oil refinery put into production Figure 1 — LandSpace's Zhuque-2 Y-3 rocket launches satellites from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China's Gansu province on December 9, 2023. Photo: Reuters

Several other private Chinese rocket startups have been waiting to test or launch commercially, to meet growing demand in China's commercial space industry, as well as to compete with billionaire Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system.

The Zhuque-2 Y-3, launched on Friday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China's Inner Mongolia region, is LandSpace's third Zhuque-2 rocket to be test-launched and the first to successfully carry a satellite.

An earlier launch attempt in July that did not carry a satellite made LandSpace the first company in the world to launch an oxygen rocket loaded with liquid methane, beating US rivals including Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

LandSpace said in a statement that the two launches showed that Zhuque-2 is reliable enough for commercial launches. The Beijing-based company said Zhuque-2 is capable of delivering a total payload of 1.5 tons to an orbit of 500 kilometers, and they plan to increase that to 4 tons in upgraded versions.

Chinese startup OrienSpace said it planned to launch its solid-fuel rocket Gravity-1 for the first time in December. Deep Blue Aerospace, which is developing reusable kerosene-fueled rockets, aims to test-launch its Nebula-1 rocket into orbit and recover it.

Meanwhile, Galactic Energy on Tuesday launched its Ceres-1 solid-fuel rocket with two satellites into orbit, following a failure in September and a series of successful launches before that.

Mai Anh (according to Reuters)

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