LandSpace has increased the rocket’s payload, reflecting increasing demand in China’s expanding commercial space industry amid growing competition to form a constellation of satellites as an alternative to Musk’s Starlink.
Its first successful methane-powered launch did not carry any real satellites, but the second launch in December 2023 successfully sent into orbit three satellites.
Saturday’s launch put six satellites into orbit, mainly developed by Chinese firm Spacety, also known as Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute.
Li Xiaoming, the institute’s vice-president, said in a livestream hosted by LandSpace before the launch that the payload comprised a radar satellite, two multispectral satellites and three satellites for scientific experiments, weighing between 20kg and 300kg.
REUSABLE ROCKETS
The three research-focussed satellites will help with China’s deep-space exploration ambitions, while the pair of multispectral satellites will be dedicated to environmental monitoring and identifying mineral deposits, respectively, Li said.
The radar satellite is an all-weather Earth-observation satellite that produces images during the day and night, as well as see through clouds and rain, he added.
The radar satellite “can also pick up small, millimeter-level shifts in the surface, a capability that makes it extremely useful across urban development, transportation and energy infrastructure monitoring,” said Li.
Spacety was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in January 2023 for allegedly supplying a Russian company with radar satellite imagery over Ukraine, which the US said was used to enable the Russian mercenary group Wagner’s combat operations in Ukraine.
Spacety has denied the claims, saying it has never had any business dealings with the entities mentioned by the Treasury Department and that its products and services are solely intended for commercial and civilian use.
Reusable rockets, pioneered by SpaceX, have demonstrated that they can lower costs for launch vehicles and space transportation.
LandSpace founder and CEO Zhang Changwu has said the company had started developing reusable rockets and expected to conduct a test launch in the second half of 2025.
The latest model in its Zhuque-2 series includes technical improvements that will help the company’s goal of launching a reusable rocket.
