China's biggest and most powerful carrier (运载) rocket flew into space on Dec 27, 2019. The Long March 5 started its task at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan.
The 57-meter-tall rocket, known as the Long March 5 Y3, is the tallest, strongest and most technologically sophisticated (技术复杂的) rocket in China. Since it is much bigger than China's other Long March rockets, people call it "Fat 5". The rocket is able to carry spacecraft (航天器) weighing up to 25 tons-about the weight of 16 mid-size cars into low-earth orbit (近地轨道), China Daily reported. This payload capacity (有效载荷) is about 2.5 times as great as that of any other Chinese rocket.
During the December launch (发射), the Long March 5 successfully sent the Shijian 20 satellite into orbit. At more than 8 tons, it is the heaviest communications satellite built by China.
The success of the Long March 5 launch was hard-made. The rocket's first launch was carried out in November 2016 at the Wenchang center. A second mission took place in July 2017 at the same site, but failed to send a satellite into orbit. According to project leaders, in the two years since that failure, the rocket's research team held more than 600 meetings and carried out at least 1,000 experiments and tests to improve the rocket.
The future tasks of the Long March 5 will include a trip to Mars, taking back moon samples (样本), and placing parts of a manned space station into orbit.
