China's launch of its Long March 5 rocket was successful. This rocket was the country's homegrown design that could ultimately be tasked with taking the astronauts of China to the Moon, Mars, and even beyond. While there are only a few numbers of flights of this rocket to its name, it has not stopped the Chinese space agency from creating an ambitious roadmap for its beyond-Earth activities.
Also called the Changzheng 5, ZM-5, and LM-5, the Long March 5 Rocket was made for 55,000-pound payloads that make it roughly similar to the Delta IV Heavy Rocket which was used in the United States. The 4-booster design of the rocket uses, as indicated in a slashgear.com article, "non-hypergolic liquid rocket propellants, for a total of 2,200,000 pounds of thrust."
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A production that Started in 2007
Prior to the China heavy rocket launch, its production started in 2007. However, the delays meant the actual initial flight of the Long March 5 rocket was not until 2016. That saw the LMM-5 successfully sent its "payload satellite into orbit." Then, the second flight in the middle of 2017, but it was declared unsuccessful following an anomaly in one of its first-stage engines.
Despite the 2nd flight's failure, China didn't come slow with its roadmap for the space initiative. It was the country's main objective to carry out a mission to the Moon that's unmanned, by 2020, with the primary goal of gathering samples from the lunar surface and then taking them back successfully to the Earth. Incidentally, a manned project to the Moon is set sometime in the 2030s. Between the given years, China is planning for a space station of its own. Reports said that the "Chinese large modular space nation had been anticipated to be approximately a 5th of the mass of the International Space Station (ISS)," and lodge the Low Earth orbit.
To be Built in Pieces
As earlier mentioned, the space nation will be modular in design and will be built in pieces. More so, it will primarily be a "central service module to be called Tianhe," flanked on either side by two laboratories Mengian and Wentian. In addition, an EV hatch and three docking parts will also feature in Tianhe. In relation to this, China looks forward to beginning deployment of the space station in 2022, with three crew members ultimately living there.
As for the ISS, there will be robot cargo ships to be used for the resupplying of missions. Prior to that, China should get the Long March 5 rocket right. The launch blasted off at 8:45 p.m. (Beijing time) last night, carrying the satellite, Shijian-20, from Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Province, China. The said satellite attained orbit approximately 36 minutes after its blastoff.
Next in line, for a fourth launch in July next year, when China anticipates launching the Small Rover and Mars Global Remote Sensing Orbit. That will be the same time, the China rocket's first time to deploy something to trans-Mars injection (TMI) orbit. And lastly, later in the year, China is hoping to test flight a newly designed crewed spacecraft.
