iSpace becomes China’s first privately owned firm to put a rocket into orbit
- Hyperbola-1 ‘makes history’ after delivering two satellites into near-Earth orbits
- Successful mission comes just months after industry rivals One Space and Land Space see their hopes fizzle out
A Beijing-based company on Thursday became the first privately owned Chinese firm to successfully launch a rocket into space.
Designed and built by iSpace, and measuring about 20 metres (66 feet) in length, the Hyperbola-1 took off at 1pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and just minutes later deployed the two satellites it was carrying into near-Earth orbits.
The success of the mission was a milestone for the industry, according to Professor Rong Jili, deputy dean of the school of aerospace engineering at Beijing Institute of Technology.
“It makes history,” he said.
All previous attempts by privately owned Chinese companies to achieve such a launch have ended in failure.
In March, Beijing-based One Space failed in its effort to put its OS-M rocket into space, while in October, Land Space was similarly unsuccessful with its ZhuQue rocket.
Several other private companies have announced ambitious plans in recent years, but until Thursday it seemed a successful launch might be beyond them all.
“These companies are all very small,” Rong said. “They have little experience. They do not have access to the most cutting-edge technology or materials, which are usually classified [as state secrets].”
What they did have was lots of money and flexibility, the latter being something that could not be said about state-owned space giants like China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, Rong said.
Companies like i-Space also dared to try new technological approaches to make space flight cheaper and easier, he said, and had managed to lure many of the country’s best space scientists and engineers away from the state sector and into their private programmes.
China rockets to forefront of global space race
According to its developers, the Hyperbola-1 is a four-stage solid fuel rocket capable of carrying a payload of up to 300kg (660lbs) into near-Earth orbit. It can be launched as often as once a week.
The two satellites it carried into space on Thursday are owned by the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation and Beijing Institute of Technology, iSpace said in a statement, without saying what they were designed to do.
It did not say how much the mission cost, but said its rocket also carried a classified payload for military research purposes.
With the launch, iSpace joined a small pool of private firms worldwide to have successfully launched a space flight, the most famous being entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has made strides in its ambitions for commercial space flight.
Based in Beijing’s Daxing district, iSpace has five more launches planned for before the end of next year, according to its website.
As well as Hyperbola-1, the company also produces a two-stage, liquid-fuel rocket with six times the payload capacity, and a winged-vehicle it hopes to use for near-space tourism.
While China has openly supported the creation of a number of small-scale space rocket companies, Rong said it was inevitable in the long run that the more successful firms would either absorb their competitors or run them out of business.
“The winner takes it all,” he said.
