China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
A top-down view of the CZ-10B's 1st stage post-recovery on Linghangzhe. Doesn't seem to have significant burn marks in the interstage. Perhaps only one of the COPVs is affected (red box in 3rd photo).
Posted by @raz_liu on Twitter.
Posted by @raz_liu on Twitter.
Cute Orca was hinting at the same. I thought the second half of the year would have many stage recovery attempts but didn't realize they will be so close together.
Oh dear. Landspace must be so pissed for not even being the second Chinese reusable launcher. At this rate even if they succeed , there won’t be as mu CB excitement anymore . CASC has taken their shine lol
Guangyou Xingkong has completed its Pre-A and Pre-A+ rounds of financing.
Recently, Beijing Guangyou Xingkong Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Guangyou Xingkong"), a company focusing on high-speed satellite-to-ground laser communication, announced the completion of its Pre-A and Pre-A+ rounds of financing. The Pre-A round was invested by Yuanqi Capital, while the Pre-A+ round was led by Jiuhe Venture Capital, with joint investment from Tongchuang Venture Capital and Zhongguancun Science City. The funds will be primarily used for the iteration of core technologies in high-speed satellite-to-ground laser communication, large-scale product production, and market expansion.
According to available information, Guangyou Xingkong was founded in 2024. It is a technology innovation company focusing on high-speed space-to-ground laser communication to meet the strategic needs of communication, navigation, remote sensing and computing constellation construction. It is committed to becoming a leading global provider of space laser communication products and solutions, and helping customers build a future-oriented integrated space-air-ground network.
The company's technology is derived from nearly 20 years of scientific research achievements accumulated by Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Relying on two core technologies—Mode Diversity Reception (MDR) and High-Speed Coherent Communication Algorithm for Atmospheric Channels (SpaceDSP)—it has successfully overcome the world-class challenge of the impact of atmospheric turbulence on space laser communication. It is the only team in the industry that first proposed a high-availability, high-speed space-to-ground laser communication technology path and completed on-orbit verification of communication, navigation, and remote sensing in all scenarios.
At the product level, the company has completed the development of an end-to-end satellite-to-ground laser communication solution based on mode diversity reception. It can support reliable transmission at ultra-high communication rates of 100Gbps/200Gbps per channel. It is the world's first commercially available high-speed satellite-to-ground laser communication equipment with leading technical indicators globally.
Ultimately the CZ-12A is a very underpowered launcher (it is thought that it can't launch some of the standard constellation batches while being recovered) and its future is uncertain, so it's not a major "competitor" to Landspace, it'll probably inform recovery on the CZ-12B I guess.
What’s it payload ? If can’t even launch standard constellation batches then it’s almost meaningless. Guess it will be used more as a tech demonstrator or something like to at then .
It wasn't formally disclosed but the few data points we have iirc are:
-The 2022 paper said a reusable payload 3.5-6.5t to 700km SSO depending on if it had 7 or 9 engines on the S1 (ultimately it had 7)
-A video by the Spacelens Group from december explained that the reusable payload capability of the Y1 model (which used a S1 repurposed from a suborbital test article) was 3t to a 500km SSO orbit, 6t to a mid-inclination low LEO; and 9t to the later when expended
-A Graphic from CASC from earlier this year explained it had an expendable capability of 12t, based on the fact that it showed a debut date of 2026 and not 2025, this is likely for the Y2 onward with a S1 that isn't repurposed, I guess it can be assumed Y2 will meet that payload target of 3.5t to 700km SSO
In all cases it's too small for the flown Qianfan/GW batches, and it's just not going to be economical compared to current expendable and future reusable launchers.
The future of the CZ-12A series will interesting to see; bringing it to relevant capabilities would probably involve increasing its size to CZ-12B/Zhuque-3 scale, and add more engines/switch them to something better (YF-219?), I guess SAST could do that since it woud be "their" RLV (unlike 12B which they do have a large participation in but is ultimately CACL's) I'm not sure it's particularly worth it, I think it would be a better idea to develop that New Glenn-scale RLV that was supposed to be the next step in their roadmap, but that's more expensive...
CZ-12A Y2 to be launched on August 5th and ZQ-3 Y2 to be launched on August 13th (both at Jiuquan). Posted by @Rational314159 on Twitter.
Yinli-1 is on its way