A TL 2 Y1 rocket named after Zhangjiagang, a county-level city of Suzhou, carrying a satellite in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers which will be used in remote sensing imaging experiments and other technical verification, blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 4:48 pm in 2rd April. The launch marks the change from solid-propellant rockets to liquid-propellant ones in China’s commercial spaceflight industry.
The medium-sized TL 2 (Zhangjiagang), which stands for Tianlong 2 or Sky Dragon 2, was developed in three years by Space Pioneer, an aerospace company in China. The three-stage liquid-fueled rocket uses environment-friendly fuel, including liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen and kerosene. It is 32.8 meters tall and 3.35 meters in diameter, and has a liftoff weight of 153 metric tons and a takeoff thrust of 193 metric tons. The rocket is capable of sending satellites with a combined weight of 1.5 tons to a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 km, or spacecraft weighing 2 tons to a low-Earth orbit.
It is known that Space Pioneer is China’s first national-level high-and-new-tech company in the aerospace industry to conduct R&D of rocket engines with environment-friendly fuel and medium- and large-sized liquid-propellant carrier rockets. The company has the largest share of aerospace market in the country. In April, 2021, Space Pioneer’s intelligent production base for carrier rockets and rocket engineers broke ground in Zhangjiagang. With a total investment of 4 billion yuan (approx. US$581 million) and an area of 200 mu, or around 13.33 hectares, the base can produce 30 liquid-fuel carrier rockets and 500 rocket engines annually.