Chinese Reusable Launch Vehicle Zhuque-3 Advancements and Future Prospects

By:Lucas Published 2024-05-18T09:32:04Z

TapTechNews May 18th news, the Zhuque-3 is China's first stainless steel launch vehicle, which is larger in size and has stronger carrying capacity compared to the Zhuque-2.

Zhang Changwu, the founder and CEO of LandSpace, said in an interview with CaiLianShe; We will focus on the technical development of liquid oxygen methane reusable rockets for a relatively long time in the future, including our next 10,000-meter-level vertical takeoff and landing flight verification, and the orbital verification of the whole Zhuque-3 rocket next year. With the orbital verification, we will recover the first stage of the rocket as soon as possible and be able to realize the reuse of the first stage of the rocket in 2026.

Chinese Reusable Launch Vehicle Zhuque-3 Advancements and Future Prospects_0

Zhang Changwu said that the Zhuque-3 is a reusable launch vehicle, and the initial goal is to achieve the ability to reuse more than 20 times. It is expected to implement the launch in the first half of next year. He also disclosed that according to the plan, LandSpace will arrange 4 launch tasks this year, and the launch plan for next year will double.

Starting from this year, LandSpace will enter a stage of high-frequency launches and will also undertake more commercial launch tasks. It is also planned to implement a 10-kilometer-level verification flight for the vertical takeoff and landing recovery test of the first stage of the Zhuque-3 in June.

As the earliest established commercial launch vehicle enterprise in China, LandSpace has become the only commercial rocket company in China with the full-process delivery capability.

In July last year, the Zhuque-2 Yao-2 launch vehicle was successfully launched and became the world's first liquid oxygen methane launch vehicle to successfully enter orbit, which also marked China's independent control of the whole chain of liquid oxygen methane launch vehicle technology. After the model improvement, its single launch capacity in the 500km SSO orbit can reach 4 tons, which can effectively support the needs of the deployment of national near-Earth orbit satellites and the launch of spacecraft.

According to the plan, even if it is reused, the carrying capacity of the Zhuque-3 can exceed 18 tons, and at the same time, the carrying price will also be significantly reduced from more than 60,000 yuan per kilogram to less than 20,000 yuan per kilogram.

Zhang Changwu said that the Zhuque-3 will push the commercial aerospace forward one step further. On the one hand, it paves the way for the liquid oxygen methane technical route, and on the other hand, it also lays a good foundation for the subsequent development of such a reusable launch vehicle as the Zhuque-3.

Based on the launch of the Zhuque-3, on the one hand, it can promote China's satellite Internet project more efficiently, including the construction of major space infrastructure, and further improve our country's ability to enter space. On the other hand, the future carrying price can also be reduced from the current average of 50,000 to 60,000 yuan per kilogram to less than 20,000 yuan per kilogram.

For the Zhuque-3, at present, our initial goal is to achieve the ability to reuse more than 20 times first, and then continue to improve its reuse times on this basis.

TapTechNews learned from public information that the Zhuque-3 adopts the self-developed Tianque series liquid oxygen methane engine of LandSpace. The first stage adopts 9 TQ-12B engines, and the second stage is equipped with 1 TQ-15B vacuum engine. The reusable times of the future first stage of the rocket can reach 20 times. The one-time mission of this rocket has a low-orbit carrying capacity of 21.3 tons, a reco very mission in the flight area of 18.3 tons, and a return mission of 12.5 tons.

The total length of the Zhuque-3 rocket is 76.6 feet (about 23.3 meters), the diameter is 4.5 feet (about 1.4 meters), the diameter of the fairing is 5.2 feet (about 1.6 meters), the takeoff weight is about 660 tons, and the takeoff thrust is about 900 tons. It is equipped with the Tianque TQ-12A engine, adopts its own starting mode, and has functions such as thrust adjustment and high-precision control of the mixture ratio. On the basis of TQ-12, the thrust is increased by 9%, the specific impulse is increased by 40 meters per second, and the weight is reduced by 100 pounds (about 45.4 kilograms).