Wenchang – Page 3 – Spaceflight Now

China’s Long March 5 rocket poised for crucial return-to-flight launch

December 26, 2019 Stephen Clark

China’s Long March 5 rocket — the country’s most powerful launcher — is set for its third flight Friday on a critical validation mission after a core stage engine failure doomed a launch in 2017 and forced a two-and-a-half-year investigation and redesign effort.

China on pace to resume Long March 5 launches by end of year

October 31, 2019 Stephen Clark

Components for China’s third Long March 5 rocket arrived at the country’s southern launch base this week as teams prepare for the first flight of the heavy-lift launcher since a 2017 mission ended in failure.

Launch of China’s heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket declared a failure

July 2, 2017 Stephen Clark

China’s second Long March 5 rocket fell short of orbit Sunday after lifting off from a spaceport in the southern Chinese province of Hainan, placing a cloud over the country’s plans to send a robotic sample return mission to the moon later this year.

Second launch of China’s Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket set for Sunday

July 1, 2017 Stephen Clark

China’s Long March 5 rocket is counting down to liftoff Sunday from the country’s tropical island space center with a high-power, electrically-propelled communications satellite.

First supply ship for Chinese space station lifts off on test flight

April 20, 2017 Stephen Clark

A Long March 7 rocket lifted off Thursday with Tianzhou 1, an unpiloted refueling freighter heading for China’s Tiangong 2 mini-space station to conduct several months of robotic demonstrations, practicing for the assembly and maintenance of a future permanently-staffed orbital research complex.

China’s first robotic resupply freighter transferred to launch pad

April 17, 2017 Stephen Clark

Chinese engineers rolled out a Long March 7 rocket to a seaside launch complex on Hainan Island in the South China Sea on Monday, aiming to fire a robotic refueling freighter into orbit as soon as Thursday to test technology for China’s future space station.

China sets November launch for lunar sample return mission

January 25, 2017 Stephen Clark

China plans to launch a robotic mission to return samples from the lunar surface, the first such mission in four decades, in November on top of the country’s new heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket, according to state media reports.

Video: Long March 5 rocket lifts off on maiden flight

November 3, 2016 Stephen Clark

China debuted its new Long March 5 rocket Thursday with a successful nighttime blastoff on top of 2.4 million pounds of ground-shaking thrust from the country’s new Hainan Island spaceport.

China launches Long March 5, one of the world’s most powerful rockets

November 3, 2016 Stephen Clark

China’s heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket fired into space on a successful inaugural flight Thursday, debuting a brand new launcher that can carry twice the payload of any other Chinese booster and setting a keystone for the country’s ambitions for a space station and interplanetary exploration.

Long March 5 heavy-lifter ready to join China’s rocket inventory

November 2, 2016 Stephen Clark

China is ready to debut a heavy-lifting rocket rivaling the biggest boosters in the world Thursday, paving the way for a backlog of missions to loft massive space station modules, send deep space probes to the moon and Mars, and perhaps deploy commercial satellites.