Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, March 23 (Xinhua)-- US space startup Relativistic Aerospace Relativity Space has launched the Terran 1, which has been called the world's first 3D printing rocket, and has made two previous attempts but failed to ignite.

Relativity Space tried again today. At 11:25 Beijing time today, the "Terran 1" carrier rocket ignited and took off from LC-16 at Cape Navilar. The first stage worked normally, the secondary engine failed to start (shut down ahead of schedule), failed to fully form thrust, and the launch mission failed.

This is the second time that mankind has tried to challenge the successful launch of a liquid oxygen methane (natural gas) carrier rocket. Earlier, the China Blue Arrow Aerospace Corporation (LANDSPACE) Vermilion Bird-2 carrier rocket (ZQ-2) was launched for the first time by a liquid oxygen methane rocket on December 14, 2022, but the rocket failed to orbit.

This failure is the fourth failure of the global space launch this year: three failures by the United States and one failure by Japan.

The Terran-1 rocket, which is 33.5 meters high and 2.2 meters in diameter, is currently the largest 3D printed object in the world to try to fly in orbit. Including the engine, 85% of the components of the rocket are printed in 3D, and most of the parts can be recycled.

Its propellant is liquid oxygen and methane. There are nine Aeon engines in the first stage and one Aeon Vac engine in the second stage. The LEO has a capacity of 1.25t. It is priced at $12 million per launch (CTOnews.com Note: currently about RMB 83.4 million), and the launch price per kilogram load is less than $10,000.

In addition, Relativity is already working on a successor to Terran 1, a larger, reusable series of rockets called Terran R.

So far, the company has raised more than $1.3 billion with a valuation of $4.2 billion. It will have headquarters and factories in California, engine testing facilities in Mississippi and launch sites in Florida.

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