On June 15, 2023, China will launch a Long March 2 D carrier rocket to transport 41 satellites into space. China's Long March 2 D carrier rocket was launched on Thursday to launch 41 satellites into space, setting a new national record for the most spacecraft launched in a single mission.
The rocket blasted off at 1: 30 PM from a service tower surrounded by mountains at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province, thundering into sunny skies.
After a brief flight, the second stage of the rocket successfully placed the 41 small remote-sensing satellites into preset orbits, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.
The Long March 2 D is a highly dependable rocket produced by CASC, designed and built by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology. Since its launch in August 1992, the model has been utilized in 76 flights, all of which have been successful.
The success of its success has earned it the moniker as the gold-medal rocket model in China's space industry.
The rocket has a diameter of 3.35 meters and a liftoff weight of 251 metric tons.
Its typical tasks are to transport satellites to low-Earth or sun-synchronous orbits.
At an altitude of 700 kilometers, it is capable of sending a 1.3-ton spacecraft to a sun-synchronous orbit with an altitude of 700 kilometers, or satellites with a combined weight of 4 tons to a low-Earth orbit.
The previous record was set just 8 days ago by a ZK 1 A rocket, which sent 26 satellites into orbit. CAS Space, a company based in Beijing, developed the ZK 1 A.
The world record is set by SpaceX's Falcon 9, which lifted 143 satellites in January 2021. California is where SpaceX is based.
The satellites, which were launched on Thursday, were constructed by Changguang Satellite Technology, a state-owned enterprise in northeast China's Jilin province, and are mainly tasked with obtaining high-definition Earth images.
The images and data products generated by the space network will be used in various fields, including industrial analysis, regional surveys, landing resources mapping, mineral development and urban construction planning, according to the Academy.