China to launch more than 50 rockets, spacecraft in 2022

China’s aerospace sector is busy going ahead with the preparations for carrying out the nation’s ambitious space exploration scheme of sending over 50 spacecraft into space in 2022, with all work of research and development, production and debugging underway in an orderly manner.

The country plans to launch the Long March-8 Y2 rocket, a two-stage medium-lift rocket between late February and early March this year.

The scheduled mission at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south China’s Hainan Province will be the first launch of China’s new configuration of the Long March-8 rocket without boosters.

According to the developer, the rocket will be carrying 22 commercial satellites in the coming mission, the largest number of satellites to be launched in one flight by China.

“Now the Long March-8 Y2 is undergoing sub-system testing. Judged from the progress of our sub-system testing and data interpretation, the current testing results are normal, and the entire rocket is in a controllable condition,” said Wu Yitian, deputy chief designer of the Long March-8 rocket.

China plans to make a record six launches in 2022 to finish building its space station, according to a blue paper released by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the main contractor of China’s space program, on Wednesday.

The launch vehicles scheduled to dock with the space station are standing by, including the Long March 2F Y15, designed to carry three crew members to the station in November this year.

“The Y15 rocket is undergoing testing for final assembly in the workshop, and it will be transported to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Base for the launch mission after all the jobs are done,” said Jing Muchun, chief designer of the Long March 2F, the carrier rocket system of Tiangong-1, which was China’s first prototype space station.

This year marks the first time for Chinese astronauts to celebrate the Spring Festival in outer space, and the three crew members aboard Shenzhou-13 – Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu, have decorated the space station core module with traditional Chinese paper-cuts, Spring Festival Couplets, or Chunlian in Chinese, and red lanterns.

In the Beijing Space Information Transmission Center, space workers checked the system status of the Tianlian relay satellites, a system of relay satellites distributed around the equator in geostationary orbits, to keep the operation of China’s space station under close watch of the staff on the Earth.

“Just because of the broad coverage, long transmission time and high transmission rate of the Tianlian relay satellites, the space station completed the space-to-earth calls, extravehicular activities, and space lectures under its support. In future, the Tianlian relay satellites will provide space-based measurement and control and data relay services for the launch, rendezvous and docking, and in-orbit construction and assembly of space station modules as well as for the various spacecrafts,” said Ma Chao, an engineer with the comprehensive planning department of the Beijing Space Information Transmission Center.