China's new rocket makes its debut flight into space

CHINA has another rocket. In a secretive launch at 7.53 am Beijing time on 3 March, the new booster rocket KT-2 made its debut flight.

The KT-2 is the latest in a series of lightweight Chinese rockets launched in recent months. It took off from the Jiuquan space centre, a military-run base in China’s Gobi desert, carrying a small, experimental satellite called Tiankun-1 (TK-1).

TK-1 will be used for remote sensing, telecommunications and experiments in “minisatellite-based technologies”, according to the Xinhua news agency.

The satellite is the first to be developed by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, which aims eventually to launch commercial satellites. The KT-2 is capable of launching a 300-kilogram satellite into low Earth orbit.

This was the third Chinese space launch this year, and the second from Jiuquan.

China is also developing a heavy-lift rocket called the Long March 5 and plans to launch a permanent space station by 2022.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Secret rocket”