Gravity-1(YL-1) launch vehicle completed its maiden flight from the Yellow Sea near Haiyang City, Shandong Province, on January 11, 2024, this mission successfully launched three Yunyao satellites into their 500 km orbit. The YL-1 has a performance of 4.2 tons for 500 km sun-synchronous orbit and 6.5 tons for low Earth orbit. The success of YL-1 has further enriched China's launch vehicle spectrum, and will facilitate the launch of medium and large satellites and satellite constellations. In this paper, the flight ballistic solution of YL-1 is introduced. The flight trajectory consists of seven flight segments. The trajectory design comprehensively considered the characteristics and safety requirements of the vehicle to achieve effective utilization of the performance. Through comparative analysis of the flight trajectory and the predicted trajectory, the result confirmed that the flight trajectory was consistent with the design results, the design methodology was correct, and the flight test met the expected requirements. Subsequently, the vehicle will be employed for commercial application launch services.
FAN ShaobingZHANG ChiZHANG JieXU GuoguangHUANG ShuaiBU Xiangwei
