The Chinese private company LandSpace became the first in the world to launch satellites with rockets fueled by methane and liquid oxygen, beating SpaceX and raising hopes for its commercial application. The Zhuque 2 Y-3 rocket blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China, sending three satellites – Honghu, Honghu 2, and TY-33 – into their planned orbits. LandSpace said the launch “pioneered a new stage for the commercialization of launching liquid-powered rockets in China” and proved the technology’s reliability and stability. “We will continuously create highly reliable, cost-effective, and high-capacity commercial launch rocket products,” the company said. The Honghu and TY-33 satellites, developed by Chinese start-up Spacety, and the Honghu 2, built by start-up Hongqing Technology, were put into a 460 km sun-synchronous orbit. The rocket has the capacity to take up to 1.5 tons into a 500 km sun-synchronous orbit. With improvements it is expected to be able to expand its payload capacity to 4 tons at that orbit, meeting the needs of spacecraft and near-earth orbit satellites.
The rocket is 49.5 meters in length, with a diameter of 3.35 m and has a lift-off mass of 220 tons, excluding the payloads. Chinese news outlet Caixin reported that LandSpace planned three launches next year and to double the number annually to reach 12 launches in 2026. China aims to become a world-leading space power by 2045 and use innovation in space to drive the country’s overall development. Inspired by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a company founded in 2002 to cut launch costs and make space flights more affordable, private tech start-ups like LandSpace have mushroomed in China and are working to catch up. In April, in a global first, Beijing-based Space Pioneer launched the Tianlong 2, using a coal-based kerosene.
LandSpace first tried to launch a methane-liquid oxygen rocket in December 2022, but the attempt was unsuccessful. It tried again in July and succeeded, becoming the first in the world to do so and opening a new era for methane in commercial launches. Methane burns more cleanly than carbon-based fuels, prolonging the engine’s life and making it better suitable for reusable rockets. According to U.S. space agency NASA, methane is also more stable and denser than liquid hydrogen, the most common rocket fuel, allowing it to be stored at “more manageable temperatures” and enabling the use of smaller tanks. Two other U.S.-made liquid oxygen methane rockets – SpaceX’s Starship and Terran 1 from Relativity Space – failed in their attempts to reach orbit earlier this year, the South China Morning Post reports.
