China's Space Program Thread II

[by78]

High-resolution images of the latest Long March 2C launch, which successfully sent three satellites into orbit. This launch marks the 474th flight of the Long March series. The satellites are Luojia-2 01 (珞珈二号01星), and MacauScience-1 A, and B (澳门科学一号卫星A, B). The two MacauScience-1 satellites will conduct geomagnetic surveys of the

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.

 

[SteelBird]

The smoke from the launch is yellow. Colored smoke reminds me of burning of chemical. I'm not sure if this is toxic or not.

 

[BoraTas]

The smoke from the launch is yellow. Colored smoke reminds me of burning of chemical. I'm not sure if this is toxic or not.

The rocket uses N2O4 as oxidizer and UMDH as fuel. Extremely toxic.

 

[tankphobia]

That's the danger with using ICBM derived carrier rockets I suppose, a lot of the earlier ones use hypergolic fuels which are extremely hazardous to handle compare to newer engines such as methanlox or kerolox.

 

[j17wang]

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Shenzhou 16 arriving at launch pad. Is it just me or does coverage of Shenzhou launches seem to be scaled back more and more? It now appears more just business as usual.

 

[zbb]

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Shenzhou 16 arriving at launch pad. Is it just me or does coverage of Shenzhou launches seem to be scaled back more and more? It now appears more just business as usual.

If Shenzhou 16 launches within the next 10 days while Axiom 2 is still in orbit, there will be a total of 17 people in orbit at the same time, breaking the previous record of 14 people in orbit at the same time.

 

[by78]

High-resolution images of Shenzhou-16 being transferred from the assembly hall to the launchpad.

 

[by78]

 

[Michael90]

That's the danger with using ICBM derived carrier rockets I suppose, a lot of the earlier ones use hypergolic fuels which are extremely hazardous to handle compare to newer engines such as methanlox or kerolox.

Yes it seems China will have to stop using those highly toxic hypergolic fuel rockets soon. The newer rockets they have designed and put into service doesnt seem to in use much, apart from a few missions here and there. They seem to be more focus on launching high numberd of hypergolic fuels that have been in use since the 90s. I believe it's easier to do so than using newer ones, which need new infrastructure and support system in place in large numbers to replace those old rockets, that's without counting the cost of doing so. So i suppose they have their reasobs for sticking with those old hypergolic highly toxic rockets . We are not in a position to judge.

 

[gelgoog]

It is going to happen. It is just that it will be done in an incremental fashion.

Russia only stopped producing the Proton launcher last year, the launch for Angara at Vostochny space port for GEO launches is not even built yet, and Russia still has several Proton launchers in stock to launch several satellites. For your info, Russia started developing the Angara when Yeltsin was still President of Russia.

Russia's Angara program is a particular example of slowness, but even in the best of times, it typically takes a decade to put a new launch vehicle into service. Let alone reach peak production capacity.