More Communications! [Long March 7A Y8]
More Communications! [Long March 7A Y8]
This post was originally published on June 30th 2024 on Ko-fi.
The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology launched its first Long March 7A of 2024 yesterday, June 29th. The rocket lifted off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site's Launch Complex 201 at 19:57 pm China Standard Time, or 11:57 am Universal Coordinated Time, and headed for a geostationary transfer orbit.
Atop of the rocket was Zhongxin-3A, known in English as ChinaSat-3A. Zhongxin-3A is expected to provide communications links, as well as radio and television broadcasting services. The satellite will allow a higher throughput of communications between China's sparsely populated inland West and densely populated coastal East.
Zhongxin-3A was manufactured by the China Academy of Spaceflight Technology and based off of it's Dongfanghong-4 Enhanced satellites bus platform. The spacecraft likely features Ka, Ku, and C band antennae for providing its services to the Earth below, the number of antennae on the spacecraft has not yet been shared.
After launch, the orbital police, Jonathan McDowell, tracked Zhongxin-3A to a 212 x 35793 kilometer 15.5 degree orbit. A maneuver to circularise the spacecrafts orbit, and possibly reduce its inclination, is expected in the following weeks.
Zhongxin-3A is believed to be healthy on orbit.
This launch comes at the halfway point of 2024 as well as being China's thirtieth launch of the year, with a goal of one-hundred. China is expected to enter a period of 'high-density' launches, with several launch vehicle teams having stated this in the past few months, with a launch needed every 2.62 days to reach the goal. Overall however this was the 526th launch of a Long March rocket.
The mission patch for this mission does also show off that this is the thirtieth launch of the year along with the exact date, possibly implying this was planned some time in advance.
Despite being designated Y8, this was the seventh Long March 7A to fly. A Y7 mission is rumored for December of this year, but this could change. Adding to this, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology said that the pre-launch operations were more streamlined than previous missions while continuing to improve the vehicle.
The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation shared one of the major modifications for this flight, which was the fairing. This fairing modification is longer and optimized for single satellites while being 4.2 meters in diameter. The Long March 7A has had two different diameter fairings for a while, being 3.7 and 4.2 meters, but the 4.2-meter diameter fairing was previously believed to have been reserved for dual satellite launches (or Tianzhou due to its size, this removes internal structures that would allow for a second payload), like what Arianespace did with Ariane 5. Publically, to the Western world, the only known use of the dual payload fairing was for the Y3 mission in December of 2021 with Shiyan 12-01 and 12-02.
