As my country's new generation of medium-sized launch vehicles, the Long March 8 can meet the launch needs of various orbital heights, but its main goal is to focus on the launch mission of the sun-synchronous orbit. Why should this orbit be the main goal?

What is the development prospect?

　　Sun-synchronous orbit is a circular orbit about 500 to 1,000 kilometers above the ground. Satellites running in this orbit can pass over the same place at the same time every day like the sun. Meteorological satellites, earth resource satellites, etc. generally choose this orbit. track.

　　Wu Yitian, deputy chief designer of the Long March 8 rocket of the Aerospace Science and Technology Group: The time it passes through a certain place is the same time every day. For example, it passes over Beijing at 2 pm, and it may be at 2 pm every day. Passing through the sky over Beijing from left to right, it may not take a lot of time every day, but after accumulating such data over a long period of time, we can see some long-term changes in this area.

　　With a launch capacity of 3.5 to 5 tons in sun-synchronous orbit, the Long March-8 carrier rocket is especially suitable for the current satellite market demand. It can be launched in the form of one arrow, one satellite or one arrow with multiple satellites. The main force can undertake launching tasks such as low-orbit satellite Internet system networking.

　　At present, the commercial satellite market at home and abroad is developing rapidly, especially in the sun-synchronous orbit, a large number of satellites need to be networked, such as low-orbit optical remote sensing satellites, navigation satellites, and Internet broadband satellites. There are hundreds of rockets, so there is a huge demand for the Long March 8 rocket to launch in the future.

　　Pan Aihua, chief engineer of the National Space Administration: We are building a star network project, so the number of satellites we will launch will greatly increase in the future, so this is very meaningful to improve the launch efficiency.

　　Complementary carrying capacity for the first flight of the new configuration

　　The Long March 8 rocket is also the youngest new generation launch vehicle in my country. It is divided into a booster configuration and a boosterless configuration. The Long March 8 Yao-2 rocket launched this time is a boosterless configuration. First flight, how is it different from the first flight of the Long March 8?

　　The rocket launched this time is the Long March 8 Yao 2 rocket. Compared with the first flying rocket, the most obvious difference in appearance is that the two boosters tied to the main body of the rocket have been removed, and it is a "polished rod" structure. It took only one year for the developers to make the new configuration rocket ready for launch. This is due to the "modular" design idea adopted by the rocket, which fully inherits the products and technologies of the in-service model and realizes rapid integrated development.

　　Wu Yitian, deputy chief designer of the Long March 8 launch vehicle of the Aerospace Science and Technology Group: We considered the configuration without boosters at the beginning of the development.

It took about three years from the start of development to flight development of Changba, and it should take less than a year for the first flight of the new configuration.

　　In addition to the differences in shape, the two types of rockets also complement each other in carrying capacity. The previously launched Long March 8 can meet the launch requirements of a 4.5-ton spacecraft, and the new configuration of the Long March 8 can cover 3 tons and below.

　　Wu Yitian, deputy chief designer of the Long March 8 launch vehicle of the Aerospace Science and Technology Group: The carrying capacity of the 700-kilometer SSO can reach three tons, so this is a main low-orbit rocket structure that is urgently needed in the market. type.

Such orbits are mainly for some Earth observation satellites.