China's Zhurong Rover Lands on Mars, Galactic Energy Goes International, iSpace Completes Methalox Common Bulkhead Tank - Ep 33

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup! Without further ado, the news update from the week of 3 - 9 May.

1) China’s Long March 5B first stage re-enters Earth’s atmosphere and (seemingly) lands in the Indian Ocean

10 days or so ago, China launched a Long March 5B rocket to put into orbit the core module of the Chinese Space Station. As mentioned last week, this rocket is a beast: it weighs over 800t at lift-off, can put up to 25t of payload into LEO, and is comparable to some of the largest operational rockets at the moment.

Now as there was no upper stage, the core stage delivered the Tianhe module directly to orbit, and then enters successive decaying orbits before re-entering the atmosphere. In the case of this launch, the Long March 5B splashed down in the Indian Ocean, without creating any damage.

2) JZYJ Completes Hot Test of Whole Engine

Launch startup JZYJ announced on Thursday 6 May that they had conducted a hot fire test of the fully-assembled Longyun engine. The Longyun engine is a 80t thrust gas generator cycle engine which burns liquid methane and liquid oxygen, and one of the two engines designed by China launch startup Jiuzhou Yunjian, the other one being the Lingyun engine which is a 10t thrust methalox engine (and which was the first engine they developed). This is one of the first test firings of the Longyun engine, with likely many more to come to test different levels of thrust and restarting the rocket engine multiple times, two key features for any VTVL reusable rocket.

3) CASSPACE announces B+ Funding Round

On 6 May CASSPACE announced a ~200M B+ round of funding. The announcement also noted that they have raised around RMB 600M in the past year from CAS, Yuexiu Capital, Zhongxin, Hunan Aviation and Aerospace Fund (湖南航空航天基金), etc. The article mentions that CASSPACE will have their first launch in H2 2021 of a solid-fueled rocket, and that their rocket is part of the CAS’s 13th Five-Year Plan Space Science and Technology Projects. The rocket will have a payload to SSO of 1.5 tons, and has already completed a variety of tests.

A lot of money being put into CASSPACE recently, and indeed, this is not the only second-tier/second-generation launch company to be having a big year. 2021 has seen Tianbing Aerospace and JZYJ also raise more money while reaching various technological milestones, while also seeing new entrants such as “Rocket Group” of Huzhou (火箭派).

4) OneSpace “close to” raising a new round of funding for its Linglong solid and liquid fueled rockets, plans to IPO in 2022

We heard over the past week in the Chinese media that OneSpace was close to raising new round of funding. This seems to confirm the comeback of the rocket company, which was rumored to be in dire straits after failing the orbital launch attempt of its OSM solid-fueled rocket.

As reported in the DFH episode of Feb 1-7, OneSpace had successfully raised a round of funding in September 2020, and successfully performed a suborbital launch of an OS-X (6B) rocket in February 2021. The fact that they may be able to raise another round of funding a mere 7-8 months after the previous round shows the renewed attractiveness of the company.
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This has been another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup. If you’ve made it this far, we thank you for your kind attention, and look forward to seeing you next time! Until then, don’t forget to follow us on YouTube, Twitter, or LinkedIn, or your local podcast source.