◎ Tang Shi reporter Fu Yifei
On January 1, the Kuaizhou-5A rocket launched the 15th to 18th satellites of the Tianmu-2024 constellation into the scheduled orbit at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, achieving a "good start" for China's space launch in <>.
The reporter learned from China Aerospace Science and Industry Rocket Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the "rocket company") that from March 2023, 3 to the present, the Kuaizhou-22A rocket has been continuously launched in batches of "5 batches of 20 satellites" to help complete the basic construction of the sub-constellation of the sun-synchronous orbit business of the Tianmu-12 constellation. In particular, in the last three missions, the rocket entered the site once and was successfully launched at the same station within <> days, marking that it has officially entered the stage of mass production, batch assembly, and batch launch.
One entry, "one arrow and three consecutive arrows", this is the first time for the Kuaizhou rocket, and the key is the consistency of product batch quality. The slightest misstep in any of the three consecutive missions will disrupt the overall rhythm, which requires further improving the team's quality control capabilities on the basis of multiple launches in the early stage. To this end, the Kuaizhou team has worked hard to build a quality system and implement the quality culture, and finally achieved "zero failure" in the product and "double consummation" in the process results.
Continuous fast-frequency transmission is inseparable from the continuous improvement and upgrading of various elements of the mission organization. Based on the experience of the past 27 missions and taking this continuous launch mission as an opportunity, the Kuaizhou team has created a good performance of one team member to ensure 1 missions and have launch conditions within 3 days. According to Zhu Feng, director of the Kuaizhou-7A model project office, in the rocket assembly stage, the three missions are dynamically interspersed and parallel, and multiple missions are carried out simultaneously with the most streamlined resources. The three rocket sets that have been assembled at the same time are shipped in wholesale, which further saves the entry time and performance costs. In addition, the Kuaizhou team also carried out one test and two operations in front of the approach site in Wuhan, which shortened the number of days of work at the launch site by two days.
Yao Shaojun, commander-in-chief of the Kuaizhou No. 2016A model, said that behind the batch assembly and batch launch is the transformation of the model idea from a single project system to a product system. In 2022, Kuaizhou Rocket signed China's first commercial launch service contract, and the development team adopted the "retail" method of signing one order and starting one production order. With the gradual increase in the number of orders, the rocket company began to adopt the model of "mass production of rocket components first, and then mass production of rocket generalization parts after the task is clear". In 10, the company will start the mode of "early batch production and early final assembly of the generalized part of the rocket", and the first batch of 5 rockets will be put into production, including <> rockets launched into the Tianmu-<> constellation. In this mode, the rocket is "produced first and then signed", and only needs to be customized according to the order for partial design and production, which greatly shortens the performance time from the supply mode and improves the efficiency of launch services.
At present, China's increasingly vigorous demand for constellation networking has put forward higher requirements for the efficiency of rocket launch performance. Zha Xiongquan, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of the Rocket Company, said: "The '12 Days and 3 Arrows' mission is the starting point of the batch networking stage of Kuaizhou rocket industrialization, and it is also an important milestone to drive the faster and better development of the aerospace industry cluster in Hubei. (Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, January 1)