Tianlong-3
Sign in to saveTianlong-3 (, TL-3) is a medium-lift orbital launch vehicle developed by the Chinese private aerospace manufacturer Space Pioneer. It is designed to be partially reusable, with the first stage capable of performing an autonomous vertical landing and being reused up to 10 times. Tianlong-3 is part of Space Pioneer's efforts to develop low-cost, reusable launch vehicles to compete in the growing commercial launch market. It aims to provide launch services for medium-sized payloads to low Earth orbit (LEO) and sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).
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Encyclopedic overview
12 sectionsContents
- Design
- First stage
- Second stage
- Payload fairing
- Orbital insertion accuracy
- Development history
- Tianhuo-12 engine
- Accidental launch during static fire test
- Launches
- Maiden flight
- See also
- References
Tianlong-3 (, TL-3) is a medium-lift orbital launch vehicle developed by the Chinese private aerospace manufacturer Space Pioneer. It is designed to be partially reusable, with the first stage capable of performing an autonomous vertical landing and being reused up to 10 times. Tianlong-3 is part of Space Pioneer's efforts to develop low-cost, reusable launch vehicles to compete in the growing commercial launch market. It aims to provide launch services for medium-sized payloads to low Earth orbit (LEO) and sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).
== Design == === First stage === The first stage of the Tianlong-3 is equipped with 9 Tianhuo-12 (TH-12) liquid oxygen/kerosene engines. Each engine has a vacuum thrust of 1,350 kN, a vacuum specific impulse of 335 s, a sea-level thrust of 1,090 kN, a sea-level specific impulse of 285 s, a throttling range of 40%~110%, and a thrust-to-weight ratio of 163. The engines utilize a gas generator cycle and feature pump-fed gimbaling.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Tianlong-3” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.