The proposed People’s Republic of China (PRC) Shenlong (Divine Dragon) autonomous spaceplane in … [+]
China has been busy testing out some new spacecraft this month on the down-low.
The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) reported late Thursday that the contractor for the Chinese space program has successfully reused a suborbital spaceplane for the first time.
“The complete success of this flight test has strongly promoted the leap-forward development of (our) country’s space transportation technology from one-time use to repeated use,” reads the Google translation of a terse statement from CASC.
The statement offers little else in terms of specifics, other than that the vehicle launched from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert.
The first flight of the vehicle took place in July 2021, according to SpaceNews.
The only indication that the craft was in fact a spaceplane is the note in the CASC statement that it “landed smoothly and horizontally at the Alxa Right Banner Airport” in Inner Mongolia in remote northern China, not far from the launch site.
It’s unclear what the duration or altitude of the flight was, but it seems to have been quite a short trip.
The secretive mission comes while China is thought to still have an orbital spaceplane circling the planet on a flight that has shattered the nation’s previous record for longest flight of such a vehicle.
That space shuttle-like vehicle is thought to be a smaller version of the uncrewed Boeing X-37B utilized by the US Space Force. An X-37B is currently in flight right now in a mission that has lasted over two years.
The orbital Chinese spaceplane launched on August 4 and appears to still be in orbit after more than three weeks. Previously a similar Chinese mission lasted just two days in 2020.
The spaceplane would have been in a good position to make a landing at the strip previously used in 2020 on August 27, but there is no indication that from satellite photos or otherwise that such a landing occurred.
