China’s First Methane-Powered Rocket Successfully Reaches Orbit

On Wednesday, the world’s first methane-oxygen powered Chinese rocket successfully entered orbit, announced the developer company LandSpace. The two-stage rocket launch took place at 09:00 Beijing time (05:00 Yerevan time) from the Jiuquan Space Center in the Gobi Desert of northwest China.

The ZhuQue-2 rocket is the first methane-powered rocket in history to reach orbit. The launch on December 14, 2022, had ended in failure. The first stage had operated normally, but during the second stage ignition, malfunctions led to the accident.

This rocket is capable of deploying up to four tons of payload into a sun-synchronous orbit.