The maiden flight of China's heavy-lift launch is expected to occur within 15 years if everything goes well, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology (CASTC)on June 27, 2016.

For the time being, CASTC plans to build a heavy-lift launch vehicle nearly ten meters in diameter and about 100 meters in length, said Yang Baohua, deputy manager of CASTC.

The carrying capacity of this heavy-lift launch vehicle would be five times more than that of China's existing launch vehicles. Therefore, it can support manned moon missions and deep-space missions such as Mars soil and rock sample return missions and exploration of planets in the solar system.

The CASTC has decided to spend four or five years in making breakthroughs on key technologies and lay the foundation for the development of heavy-lift launch vehicle, Yang said. 

The heavy-lift launch vehicles are mainly used for manned moon missions and launch missions involving large deep space probes.