Guess what? The Chinese mainland has just leveled up its moon game! 🌕 At 3:00 pm on Friday in Hainan’s Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, engineers fired all seven first-stage engines of the Long March-10 rocket—simultaneously! The result? A mega thrust of nearly 1,000 tonnes, the strongest static fire ever in the Chinese mainland’s history. 🚀
This test was a big deal because it proved that the rocket can handle standard and high-load conditions while giving engineers tons of data to fine-tune future launches. You might remember recent wins like the zero-altitude escape flight of the Mengzhou spacecraft and the Lanyue lunar lander’s touchdown and liftoff drills. This latest success pushes the manned lunar program closer to its goal: landing astronauts on the moon by 2030.
The Long March-10 series comes in two versions:
- Long March-10: A three-stage rocket with two boosters (5 m diameter, 92.5 m tall) for astronauts and the lunar lander.
- Long March-10A: A reusable two-stage rocket (5 m diameter, 67 m tall) for Mengzhou crews and Tianzhou cargo rounds.
“Both Long March-10 and 10A can transport astronauts and cargo,” says Xu Hongping, lead commander of the development team at CALT. More tests and new support facilities are already ramping up at Wenchang to make sure everything’s set for those moon missions. 🌟
For all you tech-savvy folks in South and Southeast Asia, think of this as the next big frontier—like when foldable phones and 5G first dropped! Are you ready for liftoffs? 🚀🌕
Reference(s):
China closer to manned moon landing goal after successful rocket test
cgtn.com
