Chinese Space Firm Launches Commercial Rocket From E. China Sea
China's Gravity-1 launch vehicle, the world's most powerful solid-fuel rocket, has successfully launched from a sea-based platform at a position in the East China Sea, its furthest excursion yet from the operator's shoreside base.
Gravity-1 is a 100-foot-tall rocket with a squat appearance and a 6.5 tonne payload capacity. It operates from the deck of a specially-adapted heavy lift ship; being solid fueled, it does not require the weight, volume, manning and and risk of a liquid fuel loading system on board. Since it does not use volatile or cryogenic fuels, it can remain in a ready-to-go state for extended periods of time without human intervention, according to the Haiyang Aerospace Industry Development Center. This is particularly suitable for at-sea launches further offshore, since the rocket can make the transit with its fuel pre-installed and undisturbed. The operator says that the time delay between final manufacturing and launch readiness is five hours.
This week's launch was the third since 2024, all successful. The rocket lifted off the deck of the heavy load carrier Dong Fang Hang Tian Gang (IMO 9980473) and carried nine satellites to sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), including satellites for remote sensing. The launch site was at a position about 30-40 nautical miles off the coast of Shanghai, well south of the starting point at the Oriental Space Port in Haiyang, Shandong Province.
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Gravity-1 is the first product developed by Chinese firm Orienspace. The company's next ambition is to develop a liquid-fueled central booster, enabling partial reuse of the rocket - essential for lowering cost per launch.
The idea of sea launch services has been around for a long time, but is less common now than the idea of at-sea booster recovery (post-launch). In the 1990s, an international project to turn an offshore semisubmersible rig into a launch platform succeeded; the Sea Launch partnership was born, and it sent commercial payloads into orbit with Russian Zenit rockets until 2014. The Russian invasion of Crimea ended key Ukrainian participation in the project, and Sea Launch ceased operations that year.
