Launch Complex 1, also known as Pad 1, is a

Long March The Long March (, lit. ''Long Expedition'') was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Army of the Chinese Nati ...

launch complex at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre. It consists of a single

launch pad A launch pad is an above-ground facility from which a rocket-powered missile or space vehicle is vertically launched. The term ''launch pad'' can be used to describe just the central launch platform ( mobile launcher platform), or the ent ...

, which has been used by

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 Ma ...

Long March 4A The Long March 4A (), also known as the Changzheng 4A, CZ-4A and LM-4A, sometimes misidentified as the Long March 4 due to the lack of any such designated rocket, was a Chinese orbital carrier rocket. It was launched from Launch Area 7 at the Taiy ...

Long March 4B The Long March 4B (), also known as the Chang Zheng 4B, CZ-4B and LM-4B is a Chinese expendable orbital Launch vehicle. Launched from Launch Complex 1 at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, it is a 3-stage launch vehicle, used mostly to place ...

and

Long March 4C The Long March 4C, also known as the Chang Zheng 4C, CZ-4C and LM-4C, previously designated Long March 4B-II, is a Chinese orbital launch vehicle. It is launched from the Jiuquan, Taiyuan, and Xichang Satellite Launch Centers, and consists of 3 ...

carrier rockets. Until the activation of Launch Complex 2 in 2008, it was the only launch site for Long March 4 rockets. Long March 4 launches have since also occurred from

Jiuquan Jiuquan, formerly known as Suzhou, is a prefecture-level city in the northwesternmost part of Gansu Province in the People's Republic of China. It is more than wide from east to west, occupying , although its built-up area is mostly located in ...

. The first spacecraft to be launched from LC-1 was Fengyun 1A, on the maiden flight of the Long March 4A, on 19 November 1999. The Long March 4A was retired in 1990 after just two launches. Between 1995 and 2002 three

Long March 1D The Long March 1D was a member of China's Long March rocket family. During the 1990s CALT developed an improved version of the DF-4 to test the reentry vehicle warheads of the DF-31. They took advantage of this development and offered it as the ...

rockets were launched from Taiyuan on suborbital flights, and orbital launches resumed in the late 1990s when seven Long March 2C/SD rockets were launched; the first on a test flight, and the six subsequent launches each carrying two

Iridium Iridium is a chemical element with the symbol Ir and atomic number 77. A very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group, it is considered the second-densest naturally occurring metal (after osmium) with a density of ...

satellites. Long March 4 launches resumed in 1999, with the Long March 4B and later the Long March 4C. The most recent launch from the complex was on 22 April 2009, when a Long March 2C launched the Yaogan 6 satellite.

References

{{Chinese launch complexes Chinese space program facilities