Following a successful maiden flight, the Hyperbola-1 (aka SQX-1 – Shian Quxian-1) launch vehicle suffered a launch failure on its second flight from Jiuquan in China. It lifted off successfully at 0815 GMT on 1 February 2021. However, the four-stage solid rocket went...
China conducted a Long March 4C launch at 0447 GMT, 29 January from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Northern China. This mission placed the second YAOGAN 31 satellite triplet into LEO. These satellites are officially for carrying out “electromagnetic...
A Long March 4C (CZ-4C) rocket successfully launched the Yaogan 33R (aka Yaogan 33-02) radar/remote sensing satellite at 1544 GMT on 27 December 2020. The spacecraft was thought to be a replacement for the Yaogan 33 lost in a launch failure in 2019. However this is...
Filling a gap in its rocket stable, China’s new medium-lift rocket, the Long March 8 (CZ-8), successfully lifted off on its maiden flight at 0437 GMT on 22 December from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in South Hainan Province, China. The launch carried the...
The last stage of the Chinese Chang’e 5 mission – the attempt to return lunar samples safely to Earth – has been successfully accomplished. After a “skip” trajectory during re-entry, the sample return vessel landed in Inner Mongolia at around 1730 GMT on 16 December....
A Long March 11 (CZ-11) rocket successfully launched a pair of GECAM (Gravitational Wave High-energy Electromagnetic Counterpart All-Sky Monitor) satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) from the Xichang Satellite Center, China, at 2015 GMT on 9 December 2020. The two...
