China conducts second test flight of reusable suborbital vehicle
- It was launched with a rocket from the Gobi Desert, took a suborbital flight and landed like an ordinary plane at an airport 220km from the launch site
- It’s believed to be part of an ambitious plan to build a hypersonic transport system that could take people or cargo anywhere on Earth in an hour
China successfully carried out a second test flight of a reusable suborbital vehicle on Friday, according to state media reports.
It was launched vertically with a rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert and completed a suborbital flight according to the set procedure, state news agency Xinhua reported.
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The vehicle landed horizontally, like an ordinary plane, at the Alxa Right Banner Badanjilin Airport – 220km (137 miles) southeast of the Jiuquan launch site.
The same vehicle was used for the second flight on Friday, showing that its reusable technology can cut the cost of the system’s long-term operation.
Chinese space authorities said it marked a breakthrough in the development of original space transport technology. But no other details were given, including whether it is a hypersonic vehicle, nor were any photos released.
During a suborbital flight – mostly under 100km (328,000ft) in altitude – a vehicle reaches outer space but it does not reach the speed needed for orbital travel. It will move in an arc and fall back to Earth in a designed path.
Since it remained in the atmosphere for most of the journey, the CASC vehicle is different from existing spaceplanes – Nasa’s retired Space Shuttle and the US Air Force’s X-37B.
CASC wants its suborbital vehicle to be ready to carry 10 passengers on a flight anywhere on the planet by 2035, according to its latest plan released last year.
It is aiming for 99 per cent reliability and for a “one-hour global arrival and space-to-earth transportation system [that] can be reused 50 to 100 times, with turnaround time no more than one week”.
CASC also aims to expand passenger capacity to 100 by 2045, which would put China at the forefront of global transport and space travel.
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The plan is similar to the German Aerospace Centre’s SpaceLiner project, which is also reusable, takes off vertically and lands horizontally. The centre aims to get the hypersonic passenger vehicle operating in the 2040s, if adequate funding is secured.
At present, only an intercontinental ballistic missile could travel to anywhere on the planet in an hour. But Chinese space experts believe reusable vehicles have great potential for ultra-fast transport – both for commercial and military use.
However there are still many challenges ahead, experts involved in the Chinese programme have said. They include technical issues, such as getting an air-breathing engine to work efficiently at five times the speed of sound or faster, and finding low-cost materials to protect the vehicle against temperatures at several thousand degrees Celsius. Flight control is also an issue so that a hypersonic vehicle can safely land at an ordinary airfield.
