
AI-generated summary
The Long March-12 (CZ-12) is a two-stage, liquid-propellant rocket with a liftoff thrust of 5,000 kilonewtons, a payload fairing diameter of either 5.2 or 4.2 meters, a length of 62 meters, and a capacity to carry at least six metric tons to sun-synchronous orbit at 700 km altitude.
BEIJING, October 10. /TASS/. China has successfully launched 27th batch of SatNet communications satellites into low-Earth orbit, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) reported.
According to a post on its official account on WeChat, a Chinese social media and messaging platform, the launch took place aboard a Long March-12 (CZ-12) carrier rocket at 3:27 a.m. Beijing time on Saturday (7:27 p.m. GMT on Friday) from the commercial launch site at the Wenchang Space Launch Site in the Hainan Province in southern China.
The CZ-12 is a two-stage, liquid-propellant rocket with a liftoff thrust of 5,000 kilonewtons. It has a payload fairing diameter of either 5.2 or 4.2 meters, is 62 meters long and can carry at least six metric tons into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers. This was the rocket’s ninth launch and its fifth in the current year.

On the night of October 9, Russians will be able to watch the Draconid meteor shower, known as the most unpredictable meteor shower. Its intensity varies from several tens to 700 meteors per hour, and the flow speed is 20 km/s, which makes it more visible due to the reddish tint of the meteors.

An M6.7 class flare was recorded on the Sun - the strongest since the end of summer, occurring close to the center of the solar disk and potentially affecting the Earth, reports the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Institute of Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying Crew-12, including Russian cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, successfully completed its mission and splashed down off the coast of California after an eight-month stay on the ISS.

NASA and SpaceX plan to launch the Cargo Dragon cargo ship to the ISS no earlier than October 13. The ship will deliver 2.8 tons of cargo to the station, including scientific equipment and necessary materials to support the life of the station.

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos announced plans to resume launches of the New Glenn heavy rocket in December after the consequences of the May accident are resolved.

NASA announced that the launch of the US Cargo Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station as part of the 35th commercial cargo resupply mission will occur no earlier than October 13 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying over 2.8 tons of supplies including materials for microgravity heart tissue research and set to return the malfunctioning Canadarm2 wrist joint for analysis.