Space contractor plans maiden flight for carrier rockets

China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the country's dominant space contractor, plans to conduct the maiden flights of two carrier rocket models in coming months.

Ma Tao, deputy head of spacecraft operations at the State-owned conglomerate, said that the Long March 8A's debut flight is scheduled to take place in January 2025 at the Hainan International Commercial Aerospace Launch Center in Wenchang, Hainan province, while the Long March 12 is also set to make its first launch at the same spaceport in coming weeks.

Their maiden flights will mark the beginning of operations of the new launch complex, he noted.

"The Long March 8A is a new variant in the Long March 8 series and will mainly be used to launch satellites for massive networks in low orbits. The Long March 12 is the first Chinese rocket with a diameter of 3.8 meters and will become the mightiest single-body rocket in China," Ma said.

According to the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, a CASC subsidiary in Beijing, the Long March 8A can use two types of payload fairing — respectively with a diameter of 4.2 meters and 5.2 meters — and is able to transport spacecrafts with a combined weight of 7 metric tons to a typical sun-synchronous orbit with an altitude of 700 kilometers.

It features good capability and reliability, convenient prelaunch preparations and low cost, it said.

The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, also a CASC subsidiary and maker of the Long March 12, said the rocket model is more than 60 meters tall and is capable of sending at least 12 tons of payloads to a low-Earth orbit or 6 tons to a sun-synchronous orbit about 700 kilometers above Earth.

The Long March 12 incorporates a number of new technologies and features high reliability and multiple functions. Its service will extensively improve China's capability to send spacecrafts to a sun-synchronous orbit and deploy multisatellite networks in low orbits, according to the Shanghai academy.