China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the nation’s dominant space contractor, conducted the debut flight of its Long March 12B carrier rocket on Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n
According to the State-owned conglomerate, commonly abbreviated as CASC, the 24-story-tall rocket blasted off at 4:40 pm from a newly built service tower at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.<\/p>\n
After a short flight, the rocket successfully entered its preset orbit and deployed its payloads \u2014 the 10th batch of Spacesail Constellation communication satellites.<\/p>\n
The launch marked China’s 37th space mission this year and the 647th flight of the Long March rocket family.<\/p>\n
Designed and built by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Commercial Launch Vehicle Group, a CASC subsidiary based in Shanghai, the new rocket stands about 72 meters tall and 4.37 meters in diameter, and features a two-stage configuration.<\/p>\n
Powered by 10 YF-102 series engines fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene, the Long March 12B can generate a liftoff thrust of about 800 metric tons and carry at least 20 tons of payloads into low-Earth orbit. It is currently China’s most powerful single-body rocket.<\/p>\n
Research and development of the new rocket began in September 2024. Its design was approved in March 2025, after which engineers started building a prototype.<\/p>\n
Liang Yanqian, a rocket designer at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Commercial Launch Vehicle Group, said engineers adopted several innovative technologies, including high-performance pintle thrust chambers and lightweight turbopumps. These components form a highly compact propulsion system that contributes to the rocket’s outstanding overall performance, he said.<\/p>\n
Engineers also reduced the rocket’s weight through a streamlined design. In addition, they adopted an efficient propellant management scheme, integrated aft sections and large-diameter fuel tanks to improve flight efficiency, according to Liang.<\/p>\n
He added that the rocket’s flight-control software can autonomously detect and respond to in-flight malfunctions, helping ensure a high mission success rate.<\/p>\n
In the near future, engineers will conduct flight tests aimed at recovering the rocket’s first-stage booster. If successful, a reusable version of the Long March 12B will enter service, Liang said.<\/p>\n
Following Monday’s launch, more than 160 satellites have been sent into space for the Spacesail Constellation.<\/p>\n
Previously known as the G60 network, the Spacesail Constellation is designed to provide high-speed, secure and reliable broadband internet services worldwide. According to Spacesail, the network is expected to comprise more than 10,000 satellites operating in low-Earth orbit by the end of 2030.<\/p>\n
Experts said that compared with satellites operating in higher orbits, low-Earth-orbit satellites offer lower latency and broader coverage, particularly in plateau regions, making them better suited for space-based internet networks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the nation’s dominant space contractor, conducted the debut flight of its Long March 12B carrier rocket on Monday afternoon. According to the State-owned conglomerate, commonly abbreviated as CASC, the 24-story-tall rocket blasted off at 4:40 pm from a newly built service tower at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}