The second flight of China’s new medium-lift Long March 7A rocket successfully placed an experimental satellite into orbit Thursday, following a failed launch of the same configuration last year caused by a problem in a booster liquid oxygen system.
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.
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.
A brand new Chinese launcher powered by kerosene-burning rocket engines could take off on its first flight as soon as Saturday, also debuting a new spaceport on Hainan Island in the South China Sea.