Nation plans to resume Long March 5 flights in July

The strongest and most technologically sophisticated rocket ever built by China, Long March 5 has a liftoff weight of 869 tons, a maximum carrying capacity of 25 tons to a low-Earth orbit, or 14 tons to a geosynchronous transfer orbit. Transfer orbits are typically elliptical and are used to transfer between two circular orbits. Its payload capacity is about 2.5 times bigger than any other Chinese rocket.

The gigantic rocket's first flight was in November 2016 at the Wenchang center. The second mission was in July 2017 at the same site and failed due to structural abnormalities inside the turbine exhaust device of one of the first stage's liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engines.

The nation's space industry has pinned its hopes on the Long March 5 and its variants because scientists and engineers want to use them to assemble the first Chinese space station and to send probes to Mars and Jupiter.

The July 2017 failure extensively affected the country's space agenda given that the government had to postpone several key missions such as the Chang'e 5 mission, which aims to send a rover to take samples from the moon's surface and bring them back to Earth. So the resumption of Long March 5 flights has been eagerly awaited for a long time.