China successfully launched its heaviest rocket and put an end to decades

After the failure in 2017, China was still able to launch the Changzheng-5 superheavy rocket. She started from the southern island of Hainan on December 27 at 20:45 local time. The start went smoothly and was filmed.

The rocket has a height of 56 meters and weighs about 867 thousand kilograms. It is able to bring a payload of up to 25 tons into low Earth orbit. If you need to lift the load into a higher geostationary orbit, the weight of the rocket will be reduced to 14 thousand kilograms. The Chinese government announced that an unnamed secret technology will be tested as part of the launch.

It was the last missile launch in the past decade and the 34th missile launched for China in 2019. Thus, the Celestial Empire for the second year in a row becomes the leader in the number of launches.

For China, Changzheng-5 represents an important milestone in space exploration. It is with the successful launch of this rocket that the country’s hopes for the exploration of the Moon, as well as the launch of its own spacecraft with a crew, are connected. In addition, one of the future missions is to deliver lunar soil samples to Earth. This rocket can also be used for flights to Mars, and its modified version will serve to build the Chinese analogue of the ISS.

In addition to the successful launch of the rocket itself, the Shijian 20 satellite was launched into geosynchronous orbit. According to official data, it is the most advanced Chinese high-performance communications satellite that can provide bandwidth of up to 1 Tbps.