May 31, 2020

A Long March-2D launch vehicleblasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and successfully sent satellites Gaofen-9 02 and HEAD-4 in the preset orbit

The launch achieves complete success

The Long March-2D launch vehicleused in this launch mission is a two-stage liquid launch vehicle researched and developed by Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, which has a lift-off thrust of 300 tons, corresponding to a carrying capacity of 1.2 tons at the 700 km sun-synchronous orbit, and it also has the launch capacity for single satellite and multiple satellites to different orbits.

This is thefirst launch of CZ-2D at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in 2020, and also the crucial step for this series of rocket to implement the 13-day launch process at this center.This launch mission is characterized by new carrying mode, meticulous equipment maintenance and integrated processes of launch site.

New carrying mode:

To take full advantage of the carrying capacity of CZ-2D launch vehicle, and extend the civil aerospace carrying market, meanwhile,avoid the reworking and repairing due to the carrying mission during development of the rocket, in order to adapt to the trend of high density and fast launch now, this rocket has adopted the design of 2 reserved satellites in the initial development stage, and standardized and modularized the carrying interface, has the characteristics of wide application for various satellite groups, simple and reliable satellite-rocket interface, and no impact on the implementation of the major task.

Meticulous equipment maintenance:

Since it was the firstlaunch at the Jiuquan Center, the ground facility may have not been used for a long time, to ensure that the launch is perfectly safe, before the approach, the research team had presupposed this kind of risk as a whole beforehand, and made an in-depth maintenance plan in advance, to ensure normal function and performance through preset maintenance time, specially-assigned person for designated task, and carrying out meticulous inspection for every piece of cable and board.

Integrated processes of launch site:

The schedule of this launch mission is very tight due to the outbreak of Covid-19, therefore, the CZ-2D team re-optimized the working process at the launch site from themselves, and arranged the transferring of the first and second rocket bodies and the assembly of the rocket and the shield on the same day. To ensure the rationality and feasibility of compressing 2 days workload into one day, teams responsible for models, overall project, assembly and relevant works carried out joint councils and joint efforts, and prepared the transferring work and inspection checklist to specify the major working items and responsibility of each position, as well as the position’s key point and danger point. On this foundation the transferring plan of this rocket was precise to the minute, and to find the deficiency of the plan, the trial team tracked the transferring all the way and recorded the time, and made adjustments of the plan after the transferring, to ensure the implementation of the optimized transferring plan.

It was the 47th launch of the Long March-2D launch vehicle, andthe 115th flight trial of the Long March launch vehicles in charge by Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, and also the 333rd flight of the Long March launch vehicleseries.

△Log of the team in charge of this launch trial