The country's next-generation launch vehicles for heavyweight
satellites or space stations will be ready to blast off by 2013, a
senior official has said.
The Long March 5 launch vehicle, to be made in the Binhai New
Area of the northern coastal city of Tianjin, will be 59.4 meters
long, with a launch weight of 643 tons and a lift-off thrust of 825
tons, Zhang Yanhe, deputy director of the Tianjin Office of Science
Technology and Industry for National Defense, said.
The diameter will be increased to 5 meters from 3.35 meters in
the current-generation Long March 3 series.
Zhang said the new rockets will be able to carry up to 25 tons
to near-Earth orbits, up from the current 9 tons; and 14 tons to
geosynchronous orbits, up from 5 tons. "Such carriers can launch
heavyweight satellites or even space stations, which the current
Long March 3-A rockets cannot handle," Zhang told China
Daily.
A 200-hectare rocket-building base is under construction in
Binhai, and Zhang said work on production of the new rockets will
start in December 2009 as soon as the construction is
completed.
"Research and tests on key technologies of the new rockets have
been completed. According to our initial schedule, the rocket will
be ready for its first lift-off about five years from now," he
said.
Zhang revealed that the construction of the base will cost about
4.5 billion yuan ($529 million).
"The capability of the base can be expanded for even bigger
rockets of diameters of 8 meters or even 10 meters," he said.
Complementing the rocket-building base is a launch center under
construction at Wenchang, South China's Hainan Province.
Currently, the country has three launch centers in Gansu, Shanxi
and Sichuan, all inland. The construction of the Wenchang base is
expected to finish by 2012.
There have been reports suggesting that the Chang'e II and III - to be used in the next
stages of the lunar program - are likely to lift off atop the new
carrier rockets.
(China Daily November 20, 2007)