Why is a private company building a crew capsule for? I dont think CNSA is in need for this since they already have a reliable one and CASC has already built and recently tested a much larger/mpre modern new generation crewed capsule which wîll enter service in a few years. So i wonder who this is for.
China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Pretty sure this is a capsule for suborbital space tourism. The large windows (similar to those on the New Shephard capsule) are dead giveaways. If the development process result in successful designs, it would be interesting to see the pricing structures of these new tourism businesses relative to that from Blue Origin.
DBA has already launched a promotion, selling two suborbital flight tickets for 3 million yuan each. Beijing Traverser Manned Space Technology announced the same price, with its first flight planned for 2028. CAS Space, I believe, also mentioned 2-3 million yuan per seat.
On January 19, at 15:48, my country successfully launched 19 low-Earth orbit satellites for satellite internet into their predetermined orbits using a Long March-12 carrier rocket from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site. The launch mission was a complete success.
As Noether said, it is just suborbital afaik. I quite dislike the wording @CNSpaceflight used on Twitter, hence why I changed it to just say capsule. It makes it sound orbital for sure. Also good to see the success of the 19th group of the Guowang satellites.
Slight correction on this as well, it was 9 satellites launched, the 19th group of them though.
I will provide pictures tomorrow, three interesting things to note here. First, this was the second launch of commercially made Guowang satellites, Galaxy Space was behind this group. Second, certain weight saving measures have been implemented, with new structuring between the satellites, new wiring (I think patterns or lighter wiring maybe) and other measures. Third and final, leaving the assembly building and flying has been reduced to just four days, so the process is quite fast now.
Next launch should be a Pakistan payload on the Jielong-3 at sea, unless the CZ-7A is not delayed and we still see it launch. There is a five day or so launch window from what I can see for both, so we may just have to see which launches first. My bets would be on the Jielong-3.
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A bit late on the pictures, but here they are.
Also found an interesting picture of the ZQ-2E that should be launching next, the rendering shows it without grid fins, so I thought that was interesting enough.
Could be just how they rendered it or it could be a material change, I have no information on it currently but will report back if I do.
I've been doing some browsing on Chinese social media and from a few sources, it seems that the CZ-7A's next launch from Wenchang may be delayed from the January 26th - 29th window some previously had, this was obviously due to the CZ-3B failure. But I've also seen others who are stating the opposite, that the flight will still happen regardless, and a few tourist agencies have even been saying this.
If this changes and becomes more clear (since I am not going to speculate, too much noise on both sides) I will report back.
Also found an interesting picture of the ZQ-2E that should be launching next, the rendering shows it without grid fins, so I thought that was interesting enough.
Could be just how they rendered it or it could be a material change, I have no information on it currently but will report back if I do.
I've been doing some browsing on Chinese social media and from a few sources, it seems that the CZ-7A's next launch from Wenchang may be delayed from the January 26th - 29th window some previously had, this was obviously due to the CZ-3B failure. But I've also seen others who are stating the opposite, that the flight will still happen regardless, and a few tourist agencies have even been saying this.
If this changes and becomes more clear (since I am not going to speculate, too much noise on both sides) I will report back.
1) For now with the current 3 docking ports this would require the uncrewed shenzhou to undock and free fly during the crew rotation.
2) Tianhe and Wentian can already serve as fully independent "orbital lifeboats" if necessary, while a new Shenzhou can be launched in 9 days in emergency.
I'm not saying it's useless but the advantages are too limited for now, maybe it'll be worth it when the station is extended to 6 modules.
Generally speaking decades of station experience worldwide have proven that Orbital lifeboat + launch-on-need capability are an acceptable substitute to having a spare capsule always on orbit (beside this would still require launch on need capabilities if the spare is also compromised).
A NOTAM for a CZ-3B to mid-inclination MEO/Molnya on Feb 7th was just published, it very likely means the anomaly was identified and likely resolved (unless this is a specific to the CZ-3B/G2 version that flew, but the upcoming 3B is likely a /G2 looking at launch history to this orbit), I doubt the delays to CZ-7A will be long if there are any.
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Good to see. I know we also have March 1/2 as potential dates rumored for another? CZ-7A, we should have a steady stream of launches in February at least as well.
We potentially have some updates on the solid launch pad that was being constructed, it may be restarted for construction at Wenchang. This is good news, targeting larger launch providers from what I can gather, from Wenchang.
This also flew under the radar, but after years of no word, we have heard that Ningbo might be getting a space launch site, commercial at that, with an environmental review seeming to confirm this in November of last year and a newly registered company being set up to manage.
We have a look at some parts from the two ZQ-3 vehicles that are coming in the future, confirming more of them, at least two (which we obviously knew would happen but nice to see).
The Shiyan-32 02 has released a subsatellite, according to new monitoring reports.
The Liqing-1 engine from CAS Space was successfully test fired for over 20 minutes consecutively, a recent milestone they celebrated, it has also been revealed that the Lihong-2 test vehicle will perform a 100km demonstration later in the year to verify reusability and performance goals, with this engine helping to power it.
Galactic Energy has successfully completed a hot fire test, the first, of the CQ-90, which is a kerolox engine that will power the Pallas-2, a reusable rocket. Good to see they're still moving forward with good pace, let's hope the Ceres-2 can get back to launch soon.
As TheRathalos mentioned, we have a NOTAM for the 7th of February, at 0900 UTC, from Xichang, for the CZ-3B, so glad to see the rocket is back.
We have another NOTAM for the 3rd of February at 0600 UTC from Hainan, the 20th group of Guowang satellites, really glad this is speeding up too, the last one was on the 19th.
That should be all for now. Looking forward to the next launch, whenever that may be.