HELSINKI – China’s major space supplier has conducted a successful static fire test of the first stage of a rocket designed to carry astronauts to the moon.
The Long March on March 10 was launched in Beijing’s Fengtai District on Friday, June 14. The stage started normally, operated stably and shut down according to schedule, the Chinese Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) said via its WeChat channel. .
The test was conducted by Institute 101 of the Sixth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the country’s main space contractor.
The successful test is a step toward China’s goal of landing astronauts on the moon before 2030. NASA is currently aiming to land humans on the moon again with Artemis III by 2026 at the earliest.
The test item had three YF-100K kerosene-liquid oxygen engines installed at a diameter of 5.0 meters. The entire first stage of Long March 10 will be powered by seven such engines. Two similar stages will be attached to the central stage of the rocket.
Engines may have been limited to three due to test bed capacity. However, the static fire was considered a complete success, with three engines firing simultaneously.
“The test is basically a comprehensive verification of our first phase,” Xu Hongping, an engineer from CASC, told CCTV. “It was a total success that laid a solid foundation for our subsequent research and development and implementation of our entire manned lunar exploration program,”
The test also verified the use of conventional baffles to allow the rocket to be lighter, the propellant loading process, the electrostatic servo mechanism and other aspects of the rocket.
A second test of the first stage’s power system will be conducted again in the near future to further verify other working conditions, according to the follow-up development plan for the Long March 10, China’s space agency CMSEO said.
The long march 10 will consist of three stages with a total length of 92.5 meters. The first stage will use three cores. At launch, it will have a weight of 2,189 tons and a take-off thrust of about 2,678 tons. It is designed to carry at least 27 tons into Earth-Moon transfer orbit.
Two launches of Long March 10 will be used to get astronauts to the Moon and back. One will launch the Mengzhou crew spaceship and the other the Lanyue lunar lander. They will meet in lunar orbit. Two astronauts descend to the surface in a lander. It will spend six hours on the lunar surface before rejoining its lunar orbiting counterpart and returning to Earth.
“The development of a new generation of manned rockets can greatly improve our country’s ability to enter space and help the Chinese land on the moon. In addition, some of its technological breakthroughs can guide the development of our entire aviation industry and will be a significant boost to the country’s advanced manufacturing sector,” Xu said.
The Low Earth Orbit Long March 10 variant will be used to send crew and cargo to the Tiangong Space Station. The variant will be 67 meters long and have a reusable first stage. At takeoff, it will weigh 740 tons, generating about 892 tons of thrust. The LEO capacity should be at least 14 tons.
Xu said the reusable design of the first stage has been verified at scale. The first stage will use retrodrive and will be captured by taut wires, rather than by deploying the landing legs.
The YF-100K variable thrust engines are improved versions of the YF-100 engines that power China’s next-generation kerosene rockets that entered service less than a decade ago.
New launchers for Long March 10 are already being built at the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island.
The manned lunar landing mission is part of China’s broader plans to establish a robotic and eventually inhabited lunar base. The initiative is known as the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).
China selected a new group of astronauts last week and is starting training for future lunar missions.
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