Long March 8 version
Long March 8 CZ-8 (core only)
Long March 8 configuration without the two strap-on boosters: 48 m tall, 198,000 kg at liftoff and 3,000 kg to a 700 km Sun-synchronous orbit, against the 5,000 kg of the standard version. It flew once, on 27 February 2022, from Wenchang.
- February 27, 2022
- First launch
- No
- Reusable
History
A rocket that comes apart
The Long March 8 was designed around an idea uncommon in the family: making the boosters optional. The standard configuration inherits from the Long March 7 a two-engine first stage plus two single-engine boosters; the core-only variant drops them and becomes a 48 m, 198-tonne vehicle, cheaper and sufficient for smaller payloads.
The twenty-two satellite flight
This version debuted on the second Long March 8 launch, on 27 February 2022 from Wenchang. The mission carried a rideshare stack of twenty-two small satellites to Sun-synchronous orbit — among them the Jilin-1 Gaofen-03D units, the Hainan-1 pair and a dozen commercial payloads — a shared-launch exercise that fitted the vehicle's low-cost premise. It remains its only flight: later CZ-8 launches have used the standard configuration with boosters.