Commercial Rocket Developer Orienspace Secures 400M Yuan in A-Round Funds
Orienspace, a commercial aerospace technology company, announced on Friday that it has recently completed A-round financing totaling 400 million yuan ($59.9 million). The leading investor was HIKE Capital, followed by CMBC International, miHoYo, Sky Saga Capital, Vision Plus Capital, Atlas Capital, Suzhou Oriza Holdings Corporation, and Fanzhuo Capital, along with continued support from existing shareholders Beijing Pagoda Innovation and Tianfu Sanjiang Capital.
The funds are to be used for the development and first flight of the “Gravity-1 (Yinli-1)” medium-sized carrier rocket, and for the development of a 100-ton reusable liquid oxygen kerosene rocket engine. Orienspace will further strengthen the construction of supporting infrastructure for R&D, and will realize the closed loop of research and development-test-manufacturing.
Since its establishment in 2020, Orienspace has been committed to building its “Gravity” series of large and medium-sized commercial carrier rockets for satellite networking in China.
The “Gravity-1” medium-sized commercial carrier rocket is now under initial sample development. It is the rocket with the largest carrying capacity developed by Chinese private aerospace companies. Its carrying capacity is 6.5 tons in low Earth orbit and 4.2 tons in 500km sun-synchronous orbit, which can meet the needs of satellite networking for “one rocket with many satellites.”
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Gravity-1 has successively completed a number of key tests, such as the overall system, the attitude control system for final repair, the joint debugging of avionics system, and the servo mechanism with load. The first flight of the rocket has entered the commercial preparation process. Gravity-1 is expected to be launched in mid-2023, striving to serve as an important participant in the global commercial space launch field.
The company has completed the scheme demonstration of its Gravity-2 (Yinli-2) rocket. Significant progress has been made in the independently developed 100-ton reusable liquid oxygen kerosene engine. The whole system test run will start in early 2023, which provides reliable motive force for the core-level recovery of Gravity-2.
In terms of supporting infrastructure for rocket development, Orienspace has successfully constructed various laboratories. The firm’s assembly and test center for commercial carrier rockets is located at the Dongfang Space Port, Haiyang, Shandong Province, and the center will be put into use by the end of 2022. It can support an annual output of 20 medium-sized carrier rockets.
