China to launch Tiangong-2 in September ahead of new crew mission

China will make another big step in its manned space program with the launch of a new orbital laboratory and a new manned space mission in the next two months.

 The launch of the Tiangong-2 space station is expected to take place on September 15 via the use of a Chang Zheng (Long March) 2F/T2 rocket.

Despite the recent launch mishap of a Long March 4C rocket that resulted in the loss of the Gaofen-10 remote sensing satellite out of Taiyuan, China has remained undeterred in pressing forward with the launch campaign for its second orbital outpost.

The rollout of module remains on target for September 13. Engineers at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center have already been busy working on the rocket. They are pressing through vertical integration operations on the Long March-2F/T2 launch vehicle that will be used to orbit the new Tiangong-2 orbital laboratory. This launch campaign started back on July 9, with the arrival of Tiangong-2 to Jiuquan, following its journey from Beijing on July 7.

The carrier then departed from Beijing on August 3, arriving at the launch site after a three-day train journey. The rocket stages were then transported to the vertical assembly building and were subjected to initial testing to verify that no damage was suffered during train ride to the spaceport. Electrical and autonomous tests followed, ahead of mounting the first stage on the mobile launch platform that will transport the rocket to the 921 Launch Platform on the LC43 Launch Complex. After the first stage was secure on the mobile launch platform, engineers integrated the first of the four lateral strap-on boosters. Stacking operations have since moved on to the second stage.

Tiangong-2 (TG-2):

The new orbital outpost will enable the crews to remain in orbit for 30-day missions. Original built as a back up to Tiangong-1, TG-2 is expected to be identical in size to the previous Chinese station launched in 2011. Having an increased payload capacity, the new station will use its improved living conditions to verify key technologies, such as on-orbit propellant resupply using the new Tianzhou logistics vehicle.

TG-2 will also be used to conduct space science experiments on a relatively large scale compared to China’s previous efforts and will also be equipped with a new robotic arm and will be accompanied by the small Banxing-2 satellite for technology demonstrations. It will also capture images of the new station in orbit.

Tiangong-2 will be launched by the Long March-2G/T2, a variant of the launch vehicle usually used for the manned Shenzhou program.

This launch vehicle, developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, is different from the original ‘Shenjian’ (Devine Arrow) version that was developed from the Chang Zheng-2E launch vehicle.

That rocket, in turn, was based on the proven flight technology of the Chang Zheng-2C. Conceptual design work on the CZ-2E launch vehicle began in 1986. The rocket was entered into the world launch services market following a successful test flight in July 1990. In order to meet the requirements of the rendezvous and docking mission, the Chang Zheng-2F endured nearly 170 technical modifications and utilized five newly developed technologies.

A substantial difference for this rocket is the absence of the launch escape tower, a more bulbous fairing and an improved separation sequence. On this upcoming mission, the fairing is 12.7 meters long and 4.2 meters in diameter. An additional characteristic of this rocket includes the fact that is capable of more precise orbit insertion accuracy.

This is possible with the introduction of improved navigation systems and complex guidance system that features real-time inputs to the rocket to orbit parameters and uses GPS data outside the measurement error correction parameters so as to achieve double redundancy. Also, more propellant is loaded on the boosters, thus increasing the firing time.

Like the CZ-2F/G, the CZ-2F/T2 is a two-stage launch vehicle that uses four strap-on boosters during the first stage phase. Overall length is 52.0 meters with a 3.35 meter core stage and a maximum diameter of 8.45 meters. At launch, it has a 493,000 kg mass, capable of launching 8,600 kg cargos into a low Earth orbit. For the CZ-2F launch vehicle, the LB-40 strap-on boosters have a length of 15.326 meters, a diameter of 2.25 meters, a gross mass of 40,750 kg and an empty mass of 3,000 kg.

Each booster is equipped with a fixed nozzle YF-20B engine that consumes UDMH/N2O4 developing 740.4 kN of sea lever thrust. Burning time is 127.26 seconds. The L-180 first stage has a length of 28.465 meters, a diameter of 3.35 meters, a gross mass of 198,830 kg and an empty mass of 12,550 kg. It is equipped with a YF-21B engine pack that consists of four YF-20B engines that consume UDMH/N2O4 developing 2,961.6 kN of sea lever thrust. Its burn time is 160.00 seconds.

The L-90 second stage has a length of 14.223 meters, a diameter of 3.35 meters, a gross mass of 91,414 kg and an empty mass of 4,955 kg. It is equipped with a YF-24B engine pack that consists of one fixed nozzle YF-22B main motor with a swiveling vernier four YF-23B engines. The engines consume UDMH/N2O4 developing 738.4 kN (main engine) and 47.07 kN (vernier) of vacuum thrust. Total burn time is 414.68 seconds (301.18 seconds burn time for the main engine).

(Images via CCTV).
Source: NASA Space Flight

Read More

Long March 4C suffers suspected Launch Failure with Gaofen-10 Earth Observation Satellite

Photo: Xinhua (File)

A Chinese launch carried out from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center Wednesday night likely ended in failure – the first in 2016.

Liftoff of a Long March 4C rocket carrying an Earth Observation Satellite was expected between 18:50 and 19:00 UTC, but the usual announcement of launch success – expected around 40 minutes after blastoff – never arrived.

Given China’s secrecy, especially for military-controlled launches from Taiyuan, the lack of an official announcement could have meant the mission was scrubbed or indeed the launch failed.

In the morning hours, local time, on Thursday, villagers in the Shanyang province -around 600 Kilometers from the Taiyuan launch site, discovered debris from the first stage of the Long March 4C rocket. This confirmed that launch had indeed taken place Wednesday night, but the first stage drop zone is consistent with previous CZ-4 missions, indicating that if a failure transpired it must have involved the second or third stage of the rocket.

U.S. Space Surveillance detected no new objects in orbit. While all signs point to a failed launch, even 12 hours after the planned T-0 time, no official statement from Chinese state media was available. If confirmed, this would be the first worldwide launch failure of 2016 and the first failed orbital space launch for the Chinese since the late 2013 failure of a Long March 4B carrying the CBERS-3 Earth Observation payload.

First Stage Debris – Photo: Weibo via ChinaSpaceflight.com

Depending on the nature of the failure in Wednesday night’s mission, a knock-on effect to a number of high-profile missions on China’s schedule can not yet be ruled out. The two lower stages of the Long March 4C share commonality with other members of the Long March launch family including the CZ-2F that is scheduled to launch China’s Tiangong-2 space laboratory in mid September followed by the crewed Shenzhou-11 spacecraft to visit the miniature space station in October.
The payload of Wednesday’s launch in all likelihood was the Gaofen-10 Earth observation satellite.

Long March 4C

The Long march 4C Launch Vehicle is part of China’s flight proven Long March Rocket family. It is derived from the CZ-4B Launcher, but features a re-startable upper stage and can accommodate a larger Payload Fairing. It is operated from the Jiuquan and Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centers.


CZ-4C has a liftoff mass of 250,000 Kilograms and is 45.8 meters in length with a diameter of 3.35 meters. It features several improvements over the CZ-4B such as new telemetry, tracking, control, and self-destruction systems that are smaller in size. The first stage of the vehicle is powered by a YF-21B Rocket Engine which consists of a cluster of four YF-20B Engines each providing 814 Kilonewtons of Vacuum Thrust

Photo: Xinhua (File)

At liftoff, the YF-21B provides a thrust of 2,962 Kilonewtons generating a total Thrust-to-Weight ratio of 1.21. The Engine Assembly has a weight of 2,850 Kilograms, is 3.3 meters in length and 3.5 meters in diameter. The engine nozzles are gimbaled for vehicle control. All three Stages of the vehicle use Nitrogen Tetroxide as oxidizer and Unsymmetrical Dimethylhydrazine as fuel. The first stage has a liftoff mass of 193,300 Kilograms including 183,300 Kilograms of propellants. It is 24.7 meters in length.

The second stage of the vehicle is powered by a YF-22B Main Engine providing 738 Kilonewtons of thrust and a four-chamber vernier yet designated YF-23F providing 46 Kilonewtons of thrust. The main engines is fixed while the four vernier nozzles can be gimbaled for attitude control during powered flight. The stage is 10.4 meters long and holds 35,370 Kilograms of storable propellants. Both, the first and second stage, are based on components that are flown on other CZ Rockets. The third stage however, is a specially designed rocket stage for the Long March 4C and its purposes.

The stage is 4.9 meters long and has a reduced diameter of 2.9 meters. Liftoff mass is 14,560 Kilograms including 12,800 Kilograms of propellants. It uses a 98-Kilonewton YF-40 Rocket Engine. YF-40 has a dry weight of approximately 166 Kilograms and a diameter of 0.65 meters. It provides re-ignition capability to the vehicle in order to target a variety of orbits and provide precise injection capabilities.

Long March 4C is capable of delivering payloads of up to 4,200 Kilograms to Low Earth Orbit. Sun Synchronous Orbit capability is 2,800 Kilograms and Payloads of up to 1,500 Kilograms can be delivered to Geostationary Transfer Orbit by the Long March 4C.

Source: Spaceflight 101

Read More

China Readies Next 'Heavenly Palace' for Mid-September Launch

China is readying its next piloted space mission, a multifaceted undertaking that will lay the foundation for the country to build a space station in Earth orbit in the 2020s.

Both Tiangong-2 (whose name means "Heavenly Palace") and the piloted Shenzhou-11 spacecraft are now undergoing checkout at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. Tiangong-2, which is scheduled to launch in mid-September, is a true "space lab" that will verify key technologies for building China's space station, according to its chief designer, Zhu Zongpeng.

China’s Tiangong-2 space lab undergoes checkouts ahead of a planned mid-September
2016 liftoff. Credit: CCTV via China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.

30-day mission

Zhu told China Central Television (CCTV) that Tiangong-2 is the country's first space lab in terms of its function. Compared with Tiangong-1, which launched in September 2011, Tiangong-2 has more facilities to ensure a comfortable stay for astronauts, including equipment for sending emails and receiving television programs from Earth, Zhu said.

A series of piloted Shenzhou spacecraft visited Tiangong-1 during its two-year operational lifetime. Those who lived onboard the vessel included China's first female astronauts, Liu Yang and Wang Yaping. (The now-empty Tiangong-1 should fall back to Earth soon, experts have predicted.)

Once Tiangong-2 is launched, Shenzhou-11will follow it into orbit in October, carrying two male astronauts on a 30-day mission. These astronauts, who have not yet been publicly identified, have been undergoing intense training, said the China Manned Space Engineering (CMSE) office.

More maturity

Zheng Wei, Shenzhou-11's assistant chief designer, told CCTV that "Shenzhou-11 has inherited all the tried and true features of its predecessors of Shenzhou-8, -9 and -10. It is therefore of confirmed stability, higher reliability and more maturity." Launching Tiangong-2 and Shenzhou-11 in the planned one-two punch is a challenging proposition, mission officials have said.

"This is the first time for us to have two manned spacecraft and two carrier rockets at the launching site at the same time," Li Bing, chief engineer with the testing and launching station at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, told CCTV. "We have to carry out the maintenance work simultaneously. Up until now, our work has been carried out smoothly to ensure the successful accomplishment of the two missions."

Li said up to 22 full-length technological renovations to the center have been made during the past
three years "in order to forge a more favorable environment for launching manned spaceships in [the] future."

The linked-up Shenzhou-11 and Tiangong-2 duo will also receive a cargo ship next year, to implement on-orbit propellant resupply, Chinese officials have said. This was not done with any of the Tiangong-1/Shenzhou missions.

If all goes according to plan, inaugural use of the Tianzhou-1 cargo-resupply vessel to support Tiangong-2 operations will occur in the first half of 2017. That supply ship will be dispatched atop a Long March 7 rocket from China's new and sprawling spaceport, the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center, situated on the island of Hainan.

The Long March 7 went on its first test flight in June of this year, from Wenchang. On that maiden flight, the rocket carried mini-satellites, as well as an unpiloted, subscale test capsule for future piloted space missions in low Earth orbit and deep space. That 2.9-ton (2.6 metric tons) prototype module parachuted to a landing in Badain Jaran Desert in north China.

Verifying technologies

The orbit altitude of the Tiangong-2 is targeted for 244 miles (393 kilometers) above Earth, the same as that of China's future space station. That puts Tiangong-2 higher than Tiangong-1, which is "mainly aimed at verifying docking and rendezvous technologies for the space station," Zhu, the space lab's chief designer, told CCTV.

Other technologies will also be important, he said, including on-orbit propellant refueling, a key technology for the stable operation of the space station, Zhu said.

"We must collect gas from the fuel tank of the Tiangong-2 into a cylinder, so that a pressure difference will be formed to ensure that the propellant will be supplied from the cargo ship to the space lab," Zhu said, adding that precise and sealed connection of the resupply pipelines will also be ensured.

Overall, the objective of the upcoming Tiangong-2/Shenzhou flights is to carry out experiments for China's future space station, including technical experiments and those involving repair work. At least 14 experiments will be carried out in Tiangong-2, Chinese officials have said.

Long March 5, too

Also on tap later this year is the maiden blastoff of China's Long March 5. The country eventually plans to use that booster to launch space station modules into Earth orbit, support robotic sample-return missions to the moon and shoot a rover toward Mars in 2020.

In fact, the first Long March 5 rocket is currently being shipped from China's Tianjin Port to Wenchang, in a weeklong ocean voyage that began in late August. The maiden flight of the Long March 5 is expected by year's end.

The Long March-5 "has made breakthroughs in materials, crafts, equipment and facilities in our space programs," Wu Yanhua, deputy head of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, told CRIEnglish.com, the official English-language website of China Radio International.

"The successful development of the carrier rocket has greatly uplifted China's capability in spaceflight. It has led the way in carrier rocket development by serialization, stylization and modularization," Wu said.

Source: Space.com

Read More

September 2016 rocket launch schedule

As we turn the calendar to September, we see a plethora of rocket launches scheduled throughout the entire month.
According to SpaceFlightNow, there are nearly a dozen launches scheduled this month. This includes launches from around the world, including India, China, Kazakhstan and French Guiana. Here are some of the more notable launches taking place throughout September.

Sept. 3: SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida
SpaceX has had a busy year not only launching rockets into space, but also safely returning a few of those rockets so they can be re-used for future flights. The company's busy schedule will continue in September with two launches: one from California and the other from Florida.
The first launch is slated for Sept. 3 and will take to the air from their normal launch facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida. However, this launch may be delayed due to lingering rain following Tropical Depression 9. This launch will send a communications satellite into orbit for Spacecom of Israel and will likely entail another landing of the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket.

The company's second launch of the month will take place on the opposite side of the country from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
This mission will launch around Sept. 20 and will deliver 10 Iridium communication satellites into orbit.

Sept. 8: Atlas 5 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida
This launch is one of the most anticipated launches of the month as the United Launch Alliance (ULA) launches NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission into space. This is a long-term mission and over the next few years will travel to an asteroid, collect surface samples and return those samples to Earth. The samples are not expected to return to Earth until 2023, but once they return they will help give scientist a better understanding of asteroids. The Sept. 8 launch will take place in the evening, making it a very photogenic launch for those in attendance.

Mid-September: Long March 2F launch from Jiuquan, China
Over the past several months, China has announced ambitious plans for its space program involving the construction of a new space station and a rover mission to Mars in 2020. The nation will take a step forward in these plans this month when the country launches Tiangong 2, a mini-space station laboratory module. This will be the first of several pieces for their upcoming space station with another piece being launched in October to dock with the Tiangong 2. The launch will likely take place around the middle of September from Jiuquan, China, delayed from earlier in the year.

Late September: Antares launch from Wallops Island, Virginia
Later in the month, rocket launches will return to the Northeast as an Antares rocket blasts off from the Wallops Island launch facility along the coast of southeast Virginia. This will be the first major launch from the facility in nearly two years following a rocket explosion on the launch pad back in 2014. The pad has been repaired and is ready to host major rocket launches once again.
Wallops Island is a great space for people all across the eastern United States to experience the thrill of a launch without having to travel all the way down to Cape Canaveral, Florida. The best viewing areas range from southern New Jersey to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but people have seen the rocket launch as far away as Canada!

The exact date of the Antares launch has yet to be announced, but it is currently scheduled for sometime in the second half of September.
This launch was originally scheduled for late May, but has been delayed several times for a variety of reasons. There is the chance that it may be pushed back to October, so if you are planning on heading to Wallops Island for the launch, keep an eye on flight schedules.
While the return of launches from Wallops Island is exciting, the mission itself is not all that spectacular. It is just a routine resupply mission for the International Space Station, sending supplies, food and scientific experiments to the crew aboard the International Space Station.

September 23: Soyuz rocket to send new crew to the ISS
Not only are fresh supplies headed to the Space Station later this month, but so is a new crew!
On Sept. 23, the next Expedition crew will blast off from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. The new crew will consist of NASA Astronaut R. Shane Kimbrough and Russian Cosmonauts Andrey Ivanovich Borisenko and Sergey Nikolaevich Ryzhikov.
The Soyuz capsule will remain docked to the ISS while the crew is on board acting as an emergency escape pod if something goes wrong. As long as everything goes as planned, the crew will be returning to Earth on Feb. 25, 2017.

Other notable launches:
Sept. 8: GSLV launch from Sriharikota, India delivering a geostationary weather satellite into orbit.
Sept. 15: Vega launch from Kourou, French Guiana, delivering a reconnaissance satellite into orbit for the Peruvian government.
Sept. 26: PSLV launch from Sriharikota, India delivering India's ScatSat1 spacecraft into orbit. This will help tropical cyclone forecasting.

Source: Accuweather

Read More

China Sends Country's Largest Carrier Rocket to Launch Base

Beijing sent on Friday its largest carrier rocket dubbed Long March-5 (Changzheng-5 in Chinese) to the country's southern province of Hainan, where the launch base is situated.

Two rocket-carrying ships were expected to deliver the rocket to Qinglan Port in Wenchang in a week, the Shanghai daily reported.

The newspaper added that Long March-5 was planned to carry the lunar probe in 2017 and could be used to launch both Mars probes and Beijing's space station modules. Long March 5 is China's largest ever rocket.

It is developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

Source: Dragon Space

Read More