CHINA has another rocket. In a secretive launch at 7.53 am Beijing time on 3 March, the new booster rocket KT-2 made its debut flight.
The KT-2 is the latest in a series of lightweight Chinese rockets launched in recent months. It took off from the Jiuquan space centre, a military-run base in China鈥檚 Gobi desert, carrying a small, experimental satellite called Tiankun-1 (TK-1).
TK-1 will be used for remote sensing, telecommunications and experiments in 鈥渕inisatellite-based technologies鈥�, according to the Xinhua news agency.
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The satellite is the first to be developed by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, which aims eventually to launch commercial satellites. The KT-2 is capable of launching a 300-kilogram satellite into low Earth orbit.
This was the third Chinese space launch this year, and the second from Jiuquan.
China is also developing a heavy-lift rocket called the Long March 5 and plans to launch a permanent space station by 2022.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淪ecret rocket鈥�
