On August 4 at 11:01 UTC, the third Long March 6 rocket of the year took off from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China and inserted a pair of KLEO Connect Beta spacecraft into orbit.

Long March 6 is a next-generation Chinese rocket that uses less toxic kerosene and liquid oxygen propellant instead of the pretty-but-deadly combination of unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide.

As for the payload, the two satellites are development spacecraft for KLEO Connect, a German company. These satellites are a test for a planned constellation to provide mobile communications. They operate in the Ka band, which is standard for satellites like these. A key part of their mission is to verify that the satellites’ transmissions will not be interfered with by signals coming from other communication satellites that are in the much higher geostationary orbit. Interference could result in garbled or missing signals from both sets of communications satellites.

A secondary goal of KLEO Connect Beta is to evaluate the performance of off-the-shelf electronics components in the satellite to see if they can be used instead of space-rated components. Off-the-shelf components are exactly what they sound like: components that are ready-made, usually in mass quantities. This reduces the cost of building spacecraft because space-rated components are typically special-ordered and very expensive.

More Information

CASC press release (Chinese)

Long March-6 info page (Gunter’s Space Page)

KL-Beta A and B info page (Gunter’s Space Page)

Launch video