World's mightiest solid-fueled rocket makes maiden flight

Editor's Note

Orienspace's Gravity-1 Rocket launched successfully on January 11, carrying three satellites into their designated orbits.

This set several records including the world's largest solid-propellant launch vehicle, China's most powerful commercial carrier rocket, and more. It further enriches China's spectrum of carrier rockets.

Congratulations to our Tsinghua alumni Yao Song and other TsinghuaRen behind the project.

The Gravity-1 rocket, the world's most powerful solid-propellant launch vehicle, made its debut flight from China on Thursday.

The 30-meter-tall rocket blasted off at 1:30 pm from a launch service ship off the coast of Haiyang in Shandong province and transported three remote-sensing satellites into an orbit about 500 kilometers above the ground.

The Gravity-1 rocket model was developed by Orienspace, a private company founded by Yao Song, who graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University. The model consists of three core stages and four boosters, all powered by solid-propellant motors and equipped with flexible swinging nozzles. It has a liftoff weight of 405 metric tons and a liftoff thrust of 600 tons.

The rocket is able to send spacecraft with a combined weight of 6.5 tons to a low-Earth orbit, or 4.2 tons to a typical sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers, according to Orienspace, which was founded in 2020 by a group of veteran researchers from State-owned space enterprises.

The specifications of its overall weight and carrying capacity mean that Gravity-1 is now the world's mightiest solid-fueled launch vehicle and is also the most powerful rocket to be developed by a private Chinese company.

In addition, it is the first and only private rocket in China to have side boosters. It also has the biggest fairing, or nose cone — the top structure on a rocket that contains satellites or other payloads — among the country's private rockets.

Gravity-1's successful maiden flight also made Orienspace the fifth private Chinese company to have its own carrier rocket, following i-Space, Galactic Energy, Space Pioneer and LandSpace.

Orienspace said Gravity-1 is an ideal option for deploying large groups of satellites in low- and mid-altitude orbits or sending large spacecraft into space in emergency response scenarios.

The satellites deployed through the launch were built by Changguang Satellite Technology, a State-owned enterprise in Jilin province, and will be operated by Tianjin Yunyao Aerospace Technology for meteorological analysis and forecasting, spatial environmental detection and ground disaster research and prevention.

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News | World's mightiest solid-fueled rocket makes maiden flight

Source: China Daily  

Editors: Liu Shutian, Gillian Tang

Designer: Liu Shutian

Reviewers：Chen Ken, Lin Yuan