By Zhu Zhe

TIANJIN: The country's next-generation launch vehicles for heavyweight satellites or space stations will be ready to blast off by 2013, a senior official has said.

The Long March 5 launch vehicle, to be made in the Binhai New Area of the northern coastal city of Tianjin, will be 59.4 meters long, with a launch weight of 643 tons and a lift-off thrust of 825 tons, Zhang Yanhe, deputy director of the Tianjin Office of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense, said.

The diameter will be increased to 5 meters from 3.35 meters in the current-generation Long March 3 series.

Zhang said the new rockets will be able to carry up to 25 tons to near-Earth orbits, up from the current 9 tons; and 14 tons to geosynchronous orbits, up from 5 tons. "Such carriers can launch heavyweight satellites or even space stations, which the current Long March 3-A rockets cannot handle," Zhang told China Daily.

A 200-hectare rocket-building base is under construction in Binhai, and Zhang said work on production of the new rockets will start in December 2009 as soon as the construction is completed.

"Research and tests on key technologies of the new rockets have been completed. According to our initial schedule, the rocket will be ready for its first lift-off about five years from now," he said.

Zhang revealed that the construction of the base will cost about 4.5 billion yuan ($529 million).

"The capability of the base can be expanded for even bigger rockets of diameters of 8 meters or even 10 meters," he said.

Complementing the rocket-building base is a launch center under construction at Wenchang, South China's Hainan Province.

Currently, the country has three launch centers in Gansu, Shanxi and Sichuan, all inland. The construction of the Wenchang base is expected to finish by 2012.

There have been reports suggesting that the Chang'e II and III - to be used in the next stages of the lunar program - are likely to lift off atop the new carrier rockets.

(China Daily 11/20/2007 page1)