Cosmic Penguin

In June 2019 the Chinese used a 20000t class submersible platform, the Tai Rui, for launching the 1st Long March 11 flight out at the Yellow Sea. Tomorrow we will see the 2nd flight at the same position off Shandong, which will lift 9 EO satellites for the Jilin-1 constellation.

Interestingly with more such flights upcoming the Chinese decided to replace it with their own "ASDS". Enter the De Bo 3, a 12000t class salvage engineering ship that has been used by the local Shandong branch of the PRC's Ministry of Transport. https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:4687344/mmsi:413021350/imo:9755177/vessel:DE_BO_3 …

As with the last flight, it is accompanied by their Ministry of Transport's SAR ship Bei Hai Jiu 101, which serves as the command and control ship for these flights: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:649916/mmsi:414150000/imo:9654828/vessel:BEI_HAI_JIU_101 …

With the LM-11's main competitor KZ-1A suffering an embarrassing failure this weekend w/ the same customer as for this flight, this sea launch is crucial for the Chinese Sea Launch dream to go right. The ships are apparently going for launch tomorrow after 01:00 UTC. Stay tuned!

And air space closure notices have been filed for a T-0 of ~01:20 UTC tomorrow. Unlike the 1st sea launch this one is going polar-SSO with the drop zone hugging the eastern China sea-board. But the downrange track is, ahem, *interesting* to say the least.....

And here's the pathway. Launching a solid fueled launcher with ICBM heritage on a path that bisects a certain island not-quite-fond-with those things downrange? What could possibly go wrong? https://twitter.com/LaunchStuff/status/1305412715599613957 …