China's methane-powered rocket sends satellites into orbit

A rocket manufactured by LandSpace Technology successfully launched three satellites into orbit, marking a significant achievement for the Chinese private rocket startup in its efforts to assess the readiness of its methane and liquid oxygen-powered vehicle for commercial launches.

This success has the potential to bolster investor confidence in methane as a viable rocket fuel, offering the promise of cost reduction and supporting cleaner and more efficient reusable rockets.

Several private Chinese rocket startups are actively conducting test or commercial launches, aiming to position their products to meet the rising demand in China’s expanding commercial space industry. This comes as there is increasing competition to establish satellite constellations as an alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Zhuque-2 Y-3 blasted off at 7:39 a.m. from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s Inner Mongolia region, becoming the third LandSpace test rocket for Zhuque-2, and the first that succeeded in lifting satellites.

A second attempt, without real satellites, in July made LandSpace the world’s first company to launch a methane-liquid oxygen rocket, ahead of U.S. rivals including Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The two launches showed Zhuque-2 is reliable enough for commercial launches, LandSpace said in a statement.LandSpace said the three satellites reached 460-km (285-mile) sun-synchronous orbit, without providing details on their types and overall weight of them.

Zhuque-2 is capable of putting payloads totalling 1.5 metric tons into 500-km (300-mile) orbit, which LandSpace plans to increase to 4 tons in upgraded versions, the Beijing-based company said.

Zhuque-2 Y-3 carried two 50-kilogram test satellites developed by Chinese startup Spacety, one of which has adopted technologies from a company named Hongqing, according to a Spacety statement on Saturday. Hongqing said in a statement the rocket also carried one of its test satellites, without disclosing the weight.

The two Hongqing-linked test satellites in Saturday’s launch are designed to support forming a low-orbit satellite constellation, said Hongqing, in which LandSpace holds a stake.LandSpace said last year the first launch last December failed, without specifying whether the test rocket, Zhuque-2 Y-1, carried any satellite payloads. The eight-year-old startup said earlier this year it plans to provide clients with about three launches in 2024 and double that in 2025.

Chinese startup OrienSpace said it has scheduled the debut launch of its solid-fuel rocket, Gravity-1, in December. Deep Blue Aerospace, which is developing a reusable kerosene-fuelled rocket, aims to complete next year its first test of launching the Nebula-1 rocket to orbit and recovering it.

Galactic Energy on Tuesday launched its solid-propellant rocket Ceres-1 with two satellites into orbit, after a failure in September and a series of successful launches earlier.

With inputs from Reuters.