A Chinese start-up created history on Thursday by successfully sending two satellites into orbit with carrier rocket developed by it, becoming the first Chinese private firm to do so.
The rocket was fired from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China at 1:00 p.m. (local time) on Thursday.
The SQX-1 Y1, developed by a Beijing-based private rocket developer i-Space, is a four-stage small commercial carrier rocket, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The rocket's body has a maximum diameter of 1.4 metre, length of 20.8 metres and take-off weight of 31 tonnes. It has a lift capability of sending 260 kg of payload to 500-km high sun-synchronous.
It is thus far the largest and most powerful rocket built by a private Chinese space company, the Beijing-based start-up, the report said.
Fuelled by solid propellant, the iSpace rocket made its breakthrough "from zero to one" for China's private commercial space sector by realising successful orbital launch while carrying satellites, and utilizing space advertising and video transmission, it said.
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For China's private rocket firms, the ability to successfully send a carrier rocket to orbital altitude has become the real test in the burgeoning commercial space sector race.
The success of the mission was a milestone for the industry, according to Professor Rong Jili, deputy dean of the school of aerospace engineering at Beijing Institute of Technology.
"It makes history," he told Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.
Prior to the iSpace launch, two domestic private rocket firms - LandSpace and OneSpace - failed in their orbital launches in October 2018 and March this year, respectively, state-run Global Times reported.
The two satellites it carried into space on Thursday are owned by the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation and Beijing Institute of Technology, iSpace said in a statement, without saying what they were designed to do.
It did not say how much the mission cost. However, it said that its rocket also carried a classified payload for military research purposes.
The iSpace has planned five more launches before the end of next year.