China beats SpaceX with world's first successful methane rocket launch (2 photos)

Private Chinese aerospace company LandSpace wins global race to build workable rocket technology on methane-oxygen fuel. The Zhuque-2 missile was successfully launched into space from the cosmodrome in the Gobi desert.





The model successfully brought the test load to the sun-synchronous orbit - this is the world's first achievement of such a level for rockets on methane and liquid oxygen. Earlier this year, unsuccessful attempts were made launch of two rockets on methane - American Terran 1 company Relativity Space and Starship by SpaceX. It is known that on December 14 last LandSpace has already tried to launch, but it also ended failure, according to Bloomberg - due to a failure in an additional engine second step.

Meanwhile, world cosmonautics relies precisely on methane technologies - due to their potentially high productivity and low cost. In addition, these options are ideal for reusable due to low fuel toxicity. Successful The launch of ZhuQue-2 is another achievement of private Chinese aerospace companies, the Tanlong-2 project was successfully implemented in April this year Chinese Space Pioneer.



Zhuque-2 Chinese aerospace company LandSpace entered the history as the first methane-powered rocket successfully launched orbit. Photo: Weibo

The ZhuQue-2 is a two-stage liquid-propellant rocket. fuel with independently developed engines. rocket height is 49.5 m, diameter - 3.35 m, into low Earth orbit it will be able to bring 6 tons, or 4 tons - to sun-synchronous.

Tianque-12 first stage liquid methane engine (TQ-12) provides 268 tons of thrust, the second stage uses engines Tianque-12 and Tianque-11, the latter has an auxiliary value for direction and speed adjustments. The development of the TQ-12 began back in July 2019, it took four years.