LinkSpace ( zh, s=翎客航天, p=Líng-kè Hángtiān , l= LINK Aerospace) or Link Space Aerospace Technology Inc. is a

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

private space launch company based in Beijing. It is led by CEO Hu Zhenyu, and founded as the first private rocket firm in China. The company was founded in 2014, by Hu Zhenyu, a graduate of South China University of Technology; Yan Chengyi, a graduate of Tsinghua University; and Wu Xiaofei, a manufacturing expert. The company is registered in Shenzhen.

Rockets

Test rockets

In 2013, before the official registration of the company, Hu's team was testing the ''KC-SA-TOP'' suborbital rocket with payloads in

Horqin Left Rear Banner Horqin Left Rear Banner ( Mongolian: ; , original Mongolian name ''Büve vang qosigu'') is a banner of southeastern Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China, bordering Liaoning province to the south. It is under the administration of Ton ...

, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

VTVL prototypes

LinkSpace has built flying vertical-takeoff/vertical-landing (VTVL) prototype test rockets, to develop its reusable rocket technology. By July 2016, it achieved hover flight with a single-engine thrust-vectored rocket. By September 2017, it had built three hovering rockets, tested in

Shandong Province Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizatio ...

. On 19 April 2019, the VTVL prototype test rocket ''RLV-T5'' flew to a height of 40 m (131 ft) and landed safely after thirty seconds of flight. ''RLV-T5'', also known as ''NewLine Baby,'' is 8.1 m (27 ft) in length, weighs 1.5 t (1,100 lbs) and has five liquid engines. On 10 August 2019 the company reported a test flight reaching a height of 300 meters. On 5 May 2022, the company announced that it had conducted a static fire test of its RLV-T6 test vehicle in preparation for a altitude test flight in late 2022, but in September it was expected to be launched no earlier than mid-2023. The rocket will launch from

Lenghu Lenghu () is a town in Mangnai, Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. It is located in the northwest of Qinghai province, China, bordering Gansu to the north/northeast and Xinjiang to the northwest. History In 2018, the Mangnai and Len ...

, in Qinghai Province.

New Line 1

The New Line 1 (Xin Gan Xian 1; zh, s=新干线一号, p=xīn gàn xiàn 1) is a two-stage rocket under development to launch microsats and nanosats, with a reusable first stage. It is to be a liquid-fuelled rocket, with a diameter of , height of . It would have a lift-off mass of and take-off thrust of , allowing a payload of to be lifted into a Sun synchronous orbit (SSO) of high. The first stage would have four liquid engines, fueled by

kerolox The highest specific impulse chemical rockets use liquid propellants ( liquid-propellant rockets). They can consist of a single chemical (a monopropellant) or a mix of two chemicals, called bipropellants. Bipropellants can further be divided into ...

( liquid oxygen and kerosene), each producing of thrust. It is projected to have an initial launch cost of $4.5 million, dropping to $2.25 million using a reused first stage. As of the end of 2017, the main rocket engine has been tested over 200 times, and first launch was planned for 2020.

Future New Line rockets

Future development of a reusable second stage, in addition to the reusable first stage, is anticipated for in a future vehicle, such as ''New Line 3''.

Services

LinkSpace is planning to also be a transport and rocket services company, providing rocket parts, and transportation. As part of the transportation, it will not just send payloads into orbit, or on suborbital jaunts; it also plans to send packages from one point on Earth to another point. This is similar to SpaceX's plan for suborbital rocket passenger transport anywhere around the world with

Starship A starship, starcraft, or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for interstellar travel, traveling between planetary systems. The term is mostly found in science fiction. Reference to a "star-ship" appears as early as 188 ...

Marketplace

LinkSpace is in competition with several other Chinese space rocket startups, being LandSpace, Galactic Energy, ExPace, i-Space, OneSpace and Deep Blue Aerospace. With rocket reusability and point-to-point transport, it is similar to

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

References

External links

* Official website: http://linkspace.com.cn/ {{Transport in China Commercial launch service providers Transport companies established in 2014 Chinese companies established in 2014 Aerospace companies of China Companies based in Beijing