Long March 2 rocket family or Chang Zheng 2 rocket family as in Chinese

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...

is an

expendable launch system An expendable launch system (or expendable launch vehicle/ELV) is a launch vehicle that can be launched only once, after which its components are destroyed during reentry or impact with Earth, or discarded in space. ELVs typically consist of s ...

operated by the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. The rockets use the abbreviations LM-2 family for export, and CZ-2 family within China, as "Chang Zheng" means "Long March" in Chinese

. They are part of the larger Long March rocket family. Development and design falls mostly under the auspices of the

China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) is a major state-owned civilian and military space launch vehicle manufacturer in China and one of the major launch service providers in the world. CALT is a subsidiary of the larger China A ...

(CALT).

History

Long March 2 was the original model in the Long March 2 rocket family, which was derived from China's first

ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range (aeronautics), range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more Thermonuclear weapon, thermonuclear warheads). Conven ...

, the

DF-5 The Dongfeng 5 () or DF-5 is a second-generation two stage Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile. It has a length of 32.6 m and a diameter of 3.35 m. It weighs in at 183,000 kilograms and it has an estimated range of 13,000 to 16,000 kilome ...

. The development work began in 1970. The first rocket was launched on November 5, 1974, but the launch failed. After the failed first launch of Long March 2, its design was slightly modified and designated as Long March 2A. Long March 2A was successfully launched in 1975. The production of the Long March 2A ended in 1979.

Long March 2C The Long March 2C (LM-2C), also known as the Chang Zheng 2C (CZ-2C), is a Chinese orbital launch vehicle, part of the Long March 2 rocket family. Developed and manufactured by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), the Long M ...

and

Long March 2D The Long March 2D (), also known as the Chang Zheng 2D, CZ-2D, and LM-2D, is a Chinese two-stage orbital carrier rocket mainly used for launching LEO and SSO satellites. It is manufactured by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology ( ...

's first launches occurred in 1982 and 1992 respectively. The

Long March 2E The Long March 2E, also known as the Chang Zheng 2E, CZ-2E and LM-2E, was a Chinese orbital carrier rocket from the Long March 2 family. The Long March 2E was a three-stage carrier rocket that was designed to launch commercial communications sa ...

was the first in the

Long March rocket The Long March rockets are a family of expendable launch system rockets operated by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The rockets are named after the Chinese Red Army's 1934–35 Long March military retreat during the Chi ...

family to introduce liquid rocket boosters, as well as a solid rocket perigee kick stage, to improve its GTO payload capacity to satisfy the domestic and international launch market in the 1990s. It was first launched in 1992. However, the Long March 2E had problems with excessive vibration, destroying the Optus B2 and

Apstar 2 APstar 2 (Asia-Pacific Star 2) was a communications satellite based on the Hughes HS-601 spacecraft design, built by Hughes Space and Communications Company for APT Satellite Holdings, a Hong Kong–based company. The satellite was intended to ...

satellites and damaging

AsiaSat 2 AsiaSat 2 was a Hong Kong communications satellite, which was owned, and was initially operated, by the Hong Kong–based Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company. It was positioned in geostationary orbit at a longitude of 17° East of the Gr ...

. After 2 failures and 1 partial failure, the Long March 2E was withdrawn from the market after just 5 years in operation. The development of

Long March 2F The Long March 2F ( ''Changzheng 2F''), also known as the CZ-2F, LM-2F and Shenjian (, "Divine Arrow"), is a Chinese orbital carrier rocket, part of the Long March 2 rocket family. Designed to launch crewed Shenzhou spacecraft, the Long March ...

began in 1992 as a

human-rated Human-rating certification, also known as man-rating or crew-rating, is the certification of a spacecraft or launch vehicle as capable of safely transporting humans. There is no one particular standard for human-rating a spacecraft or launch veh ...

version of the

. Its first launch was in November 1999 ''(See also

Shenzhou 1 Shenzhou 1 () was the first uncrewed launch of the Shenzhou spacecraft, launched on 19 November, 1999. The spacecraft used was not equipped with a life support system, but did come with an emergency escape system. After orbiting the Earth 14 ...

)''. This version is the safest model in the Long March 2 family, with 11 launches and no failure record. An unmanned derivative called Long March 2F/G carries the bulkier Tiangong space laboratories.

and Long March 4 were developed by the Shanghai Academy of Space Flight Technology (SAST), while all others are developed by CALT.

Long March 3

The designations Long March 2A and Long March 2B were originally applied to design studies of Long March 2 derivatives for geostationary payloads. Long March 2A would use a cryogenic third stage, and Long March 2B a hypergolic one. Neither design was finalized. The 2A design was adopted as the

Long March 3 The Long March 3 (), also known as the Changzheng 3, CZ-3 and LM-3, was a Chinese orbital carrier rocket design. They were all launched from Launch Area 3 at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. It was a three-stage rocket, and was mostly used ...

Specifications

Launch history

The following launch statistics are gathered from the individual Wikipedia pages of each CZ-2x variants as those pages are updated more frequently by various editors; the numbers are current as of 14 May, 2025.

Launches by rocket configurations

1970–2009

2010–2025

References

{{Expendable launch systems Long March (rocket family) Vehicles introduced in 1974