Long March 5

Priority after a successful Long March 5 flight would be a test launch for the planned Chinese Space Station followed by China’s 2020 Mars mission with a launch window in late July to early August.

China had planned to launch the Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission late in the year but delays to the Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket pushed the mission into 2020.

China's first independent interplanetary mission to Mars is to launch atop a Long March 5 in late July or early 2020-08-01, and missing that window would cause a 26-month delay.

Chang’e-5 was originally planned to launch on the third Long March 5 in late 2017 before the Long March 5 failure.

The 2017-07-01 launch failure of the Long March 5 required a lengthy redesign and testing process for the YF-77 liquid hydrogen–liquid oxygen engines.

A Long March 5 return-to-flight was planned for 2019-07-01 with Chang’e-5 to follow in late 2019, but as of June preparations for the return-to-flight had not begun.

The Chang’e-5 lunar sample-return mission was postponed after the failure of the second Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket in 2017-07-01.

A return to flight of the Long March 5 is not expected earlier than late 2019 based on previous component transfer and launch preparation timelines.

The fourth Long March 5 was slated to launch the Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission at the end of 2019, followed by a test launch of the Long March 5B and then a fifth Long March 5 planned to launch China’s first independent mission to Mars during the late July to early 2020-08-01 launch window.

The delay of the Long March 5 return-to-flight means the Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission will almost certainly not take place in late 2019 as planned.

China planned to launch the Tianhe core module of the Chinese Space Station in 2018, but the 2017-07-01 failure of the second Long March 5 rocket led to a postponement of the Long March 5B test launch.

The delay of the Long March 5 return-to-flight has made the Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission unlikely to take place in late 2019 as planned.

China planned to launch the 'Tianhe' core module of the Chinese Space Station in 2018 but postponed the launch following the 2017-07-01 failure of a second Long March 5 rocket.

China’s Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket is the country’s most powerful launch vehicle and was designed to launch large spacecraft to geosynchronous orbits and planetary bodies.

CASC vice president Yang Baohua indicated preparations for a third flight of the Long March 5 were planned for July during a 2019-01-29 news conference in Beijing.

The third Long March 5 will carry the Shijian-20 communications satellite based on the DFH-5 satellite platform.

The third Long March 5 launch had not been delivered to the launch site as of the latest reporting, causing potential knock-on effects for China’s major space plans.

An investigation identified a turbopump fault on the YF-77 cryogenic engines powering the Long March 5 first stage as the cause of the 2017 failure.