Image source: topwar.ru
The People's Republic of China is confidently becoming an international leader in space exploration. At the beginning of November last year, the China Manned Projects Program Office announced the successful completion of the assembly of the main configuration of its own Tiangong orbital station after the docking of the Mengtian laboratory module. And here is a new achievement.
On Wednesday, a private Chinese company launched the world's first liquid methane and oxygen rocket into orbit, ahead of American competitors in sending what could become a new generation of launch vehicles into space.
The Zhuque-2 launch vehicle ("Zhuke-2") launched on July 12 at nine o'clock in the morning Beijing time (01.00 GMT) from the Jiuquan cosmodrome in northwest China and completed its flight according to plan, state media reported.
It was the second attempt by Beijing-based Land Space, one of the first firms in the Chinese commercial launch sector, to launch Zhuque-2. The first attempt to launch a launch vehicle powered by methane fuel into orbit was made in December last year and ended in failure. According to the developer company, the cause of the accident was the failure of the second stage of the rocket.
In April of this year, another private Chinese company, Space Pioneer, successfully launched a liquid-fueled launch vehicle "Tianlong-2" (Tianlong II) into space from the Jiuquan cosmodrome in Gansu Province in northwest China, which became the first commercial launch of a rocket of this type in China. The launch vehicle launched the Ai Space Science microsatellite, controlled by artificial intelligence, into orbit.
It took three years to create a three-stage medium-class launch vehicle. The rocket with a diameter of 3.35 meters and a length of 32.8 meters is completely made of aluminum alloy, the engines are produced by 3D printing. The Tianlong II became the world's first liquid-fueled launch vehicle using coal-based aerospace kerosene as fuel for flight. Its launch can be carried out without the use of complex launch platforms, as reported by the developer company, a rocket of this type can launch from a "conventional concrete pad".
