WUHAN, April 23 (Xinhua) -- China's commercial rocket Kuaizhou is scheduled to complete 8 to 10 launch missions this year, sending more than 30 satellites into space, according to its developer, the Expace Technology Co., Ltd..
With the growing demand of domestic satellite market, the development mode of Kuaizhou rockets is transforming from customized program to industrialized mass production.
Expace, a company affiliated with the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Limited, was registered in 2016 as China's first specialized rocket company to carry out research and development and application in commercial way.
Expace in 2020 built the Kuaizhou rocket industrial park, the first commercial aerospace industrial base in China in Wuhan's national aerospace industrial base.
The industrial park now has a complete solid and liquid rocket core test capacity with an annual output of 20 to 50 carrier rockets assembly and test capacity, said Zhao Shuang, marketing director of Expace.
It is making efforts to build the largest launch vehicle test center in central China, covering multiple needs for developing launch vehicles.
The Kuaizhou solid-fuel carrier rockets have been developed into series.
The Kuaizhou-1 carrier rocket, mainly used for microsatellite and small satellite launches, has completed 26 launch missions, sending 56 satellites including those used for remote sensing, navigation enhancement, communications, and scientific experiments into preset orbits, making it the solid rocket with the most successful launches currently in service in China.
These satellites have provided services for China's land and resources monitoring, mineral resource development, smart city construction, forestry resource census, ecological environment monitoring, public emergency health, transportation, energy and power.
On Jan. 11, 2024, a Kuaizhou-1A carrier rocket sent the Tianxing-1 02 satellite into preset orbit from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, which was the fourth consecutive successful launch of the rocket within 18 days, marking that Kuaizhou has entered the stage of industrialized fast-frequency launch with mass production and mass launch.
The Kuaizhou-11, a solid-fuel carrier rocket with multi-star and multi-orbit deployment capacity developed by Expace to further meet the needs of microsatellite and small satellite rapid networking, made its maiden flight in 2022 with improved carrying capacity of one tonne.
Expace has also carried out research and development of key core systems and key technologies of reusable liquid rockets for low-cost and high-frequency access to space in the future to meet the market needs of large-scale and dense satellite constellation networking, Zhao said.
The 70-tonne liquid oxygen and methane engine independently developed by Expace has successfully completed the full system test, and the Kuaizhou reusable liquid rocket has successfully completed the vertical take-off and vertical landing test.
Through mass production and mass launch, Kuaizhou rocket has reduced the cost of launch, and provided efficient support for the needs of various satellite launches, so as to meet the market needs of low cost and high efficiency of rocket launch, said Zhao.
She said that Expace will consolidate the advantages of solid rockets, further improve the stable and reliable normal launch services in the future, while focusing on the research and development of key core systems and key technologies of reusable liquid rockets, build reusable liquid rockets, and comprehensively improve the international competitiveness and market share of the Kuaizhou series. ■
