Hello and welcome to another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup! Without further ado, the news update from the week of 29 March - 4 April.
1) Significant week from Chinese commercial launch companies
This week saw a lot of updates from Chinese launch companies, confirming that 2021 is going to be a landmark year in Chinese space.
First and foremost, we saw Landspace, one of China’s leading commercial launch companies, test its TQ-11 methalox engine for 4000s, its longest run so far (more than 1 hour!). This follows a batch of tests which included: simulating different regimes of flight, mixing ratios, autogenous pressurization & thrust vectoring.
iSpace, a Landspace competitor and also one of the leading private launch companies, tested its Jiaodian-1 liquid methalox engine during a 500s test, throttling the engine significantly (50%-100%) to simulate vertical take-off vertical landing.
JZJY similarly did a first hot fire engine test for their Longyun engine, which the 80t methalox 1st stage rocket engine developed by the company, and aims to be reusable multiple times.
CAS Space trialed a small 23kg VTVL prototype for future sea-based launch and landing. The test was mostly about testing the flight control characteristics: stability, robustness, horizontal and vertical movements.
2) TV Report from Hubei News on Wuhan space projects, and exclusive takeaways for Xingyun and Expace
The report refers to the heavy investment made by Expace, CASIC’s commercial launch spin-off, in building a digitalized industrial plant for batch-manufacturing Kuaizhou rockets, with cool shoots of 4 Kuaizhou rockets being assembled. The production rate of the factory is designed for 20 Kuaizhou rockets a year.
Perhaps more interesting (while slightly bizarre), the report mentions Expace’s liquid-fueled rockets, and notably that the “new digital facilities, which will enter service in the second half of 2021, will enhance Expace’s R&D capabilities for liquid-fueled rockets” (!).
On Xingyun, CASIC’s commercial narrowband constellation, some interesting updates came up as well in the report. Notably:
Xingyun VP Zhang Yong confirmed that a next batch of 6 Xingyun-3 satellites would be sent into orbit before the end of the year, on-board a Kuaizhou-11 rocket. This actually may represent a slight slip in the timeline previously announced at CCAF and in other conferences in 2020, where it was said that LeoBit, the operator of Xingyun, would launch 2x6 satellites into orbit.
Interestingly, the satellites are called Xingyun-3, meaning they are a 3rd generation of Xingyun satellites. Compared to the previous generation Xingyun-2 (2 satellites sent into space on-board a KZ-1A LV in 2020), the Xingyun-3 have “very significant technological upgrades”.
3) Geely plans group-level space headquarters in Nansha, Guangzhou
Geely announced a couple days ago it would establish space activities in the southern city of Guangzhou, in Nansha district.
First of all, this is big. Geely is not just "setting up some space subsidiary": this is Geely, a hundred-billion RMB revenue group, establishing its entire commercial space division headquarters in Guangzhou Nansha (将商业航天总部布局广州南沙).
The new entity, called Shikong Tansuo, would operate all Geely space subsidiaries: Geespace, Shanghe Aerospace, Xingkong Zhilian, and also interestingly SpaceOK (!).
This has been another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup. We look forward to seeing you next time!
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