JIUQUAN — China on Tuesday launched the Lijian-1 Y10 carrier rocket with seven satellites onboard.
The rocket lifted off at 3:33 p.m. Beijing time from a commercial aerospace innovation pilot zone in northwest China and successfully placed the satellites into their planned orbit.
According to Hu Xiaowei, chief commander of the rocket, the Lijian-1 has successfully delivered a total of 70 satellites into preset orbits, with the total payload mass exceeding 7 tonnes.
Hu said the rocket will help meet global demand for diverse, high-density satellite launches, and will soon be capable of launching more than 50 satellites in a single mission.
Meng Xiangfu, deputy chief commander of Lijian-1, said the rocket has achieved economies of scale through high-density launches and multi-satellite rideshare missions, leading to a continuous decline in per-launch costs.
Meng added that the rocket has reduced the launch cost per payload kilogram to below $10,000. Its payload capacity for launches into a 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit has reached 1.5 tonnes.
Among the seven satellites launched Tuesday, one carries an X-band synthetic aperture radar payload with an imaging resolution better than 1 meter and a maximum observation width of more than 300 kilometers. The satellite is capable of high-quality in-orbit imaging and information extraction and is suited for wide-area observation scenarios such as polar regions and oceans.
Tianyan-26 is a lightweight commercial Earth remote sensing satellite equipped with visible light and infrared sensors.
The mission also included two ThumbSat satellites, designed to verify low-orbit communication capabilities and payload image transmission performance to support future international cooperation.
The ThumbSat satellites are scheduled to carry out their in-orbit missions as planned. / XINHUA