Long March 8 () is an orbital
launch vehicle developed by the
China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology to launch up to 5000 kg to a 700 km altitude
Sun-synchronous orbit
A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), also called a heliosynchronous orbit, is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it is ...
(SSO). The rocket is based on the
Long March 7 with its first stage and two boosters, along with the existing liquid hydrogen burning third stage of the
Long March 3A/
3B/
3C and
7A as its second stage.
A planned future launch vehicle variant of the Long March 8 will be
partially reusable by featuring a
combined booster recovery of the first stage and the boosters as a single unit.
The maiden flight of the Long March 8 was launched on 22 December 2020 from the
Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site
The Wenchang Space Launch Site ( zh, 文昌航天发射场, links=no), located in Wenchang, Hainan, China, is a rocket launch site — one of the two spacecraft launch sites of Xichang Satellite Launch Center (the other site is in Xichang, ...
.
[
]
Launch Statistics
List of launches
See also
* Long March 9
* Comparison of orbital launchers families
* Comparison of orbital launch systems
* Expendable launch system
An expendable launch system (or expendable launch vehicle/ELV) is a launch vehicle that can be launched only once, after which its components are either destroyed during reentry or discarded in space. ELVs typically consist of several rocket sta ...
* Lists of rockets
References
{{Orbital launch systems
Vehicles introduced in 2020
2020 in China
2020 in technology
Long March (rocket family)