Cosmic Penguin
Geek Penguin in GTO
Note from editor: Well...I was quite busy last month and up till now, so I have left out all 3 Chinese satellite launches in November till now. I apologize if this confuses you guys. :embarrassed:
Remember the deal that the Chinese launched a "quick launch" solid fuel rocket and satellite in September last year?
Well, it has strike again! On November 21 at 06:37 UTC, the 2nd Kuaizhou ("Fast boat / Clipper") rocket and satellite was launched from a mobile launch pad just east of the more well known launch pads at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, just 1 day after another satellite launch happened there! Like the last mission, this small optical satellite with a manoeuvrable upper stage/service module was deployed into a very low 300 km polar orbit, for which its images would actually be used by China's main civilian satellite data center for emergency response uses.
But unlike last time, we now know a little more about this thing.....
......because its developer CASIC (the leader in solid fuel propulsion in China and developer of several ICBMs) is actually selling the whole launcher and satellite system on the market! Or at least, a commercialized version of it - here is it on display at the 2014 Zhuhai Airshow just 2 weeks before this launch:
And this news report (in Chinese, but the essentials are in the working model) shows how the 19.4 m high, 30 tonne rocket launches from a car (the real variant uses a military transporter like those you see for IRBM or even ICBM like the Russian Topol-M)! :hmm:
And here's the real thing as launched:
Remember the deal that the Chinese launched a "quick launch" solid fuel rocket and satellite in September last year?
Well, it has strike again! On November 21 at 06:37 UTC, the 2nd Kuaizhou ("Fast boat / Clipper") rocket and satellite was launched from a mobile launch pad just east of the more well known launch pads at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, just 1 day after another satellite launch happened there! Like the last mission, this small optical satellite with a manoeuvrable upper stage/service module was deployed into a very low 300 km polar orbit, for which its images would actually be used by China's main civilian satellite data center for emergency response uses.
But unlike last time, we now know a little more about this thing.....
......because its developer CASIC (the leader in solid fuel propulsion in China and developer of several ICBMs) is actually selling the whole launcher and satellite system on the market! Or at least, a commercialized version of it - here is it on display at the 2014 Zhuhai Airshow just 2 weeks before this launch:
And this news report (in Chinese, but the essentials are in the working model) shows how the 19.4 m high, 30 tonne rocket launches from a car (the real variant uses a military transporter like those you see for IRBM or even ICBM like the Russian Topol-M)! :hmm:
And here's the real thing as launched:
