China has landed a mysterious spacecraft that spent nine months in Earth’s orbit, making the country one of the few entities to successfully pilot a reusable spacecraft. While China has not revealed details about the spacecraft’s design and operation, aerospace engineers have pieced together information from fragments, creating a picture of a craft with potential for both research and military use.
“The complete success of this experiment marks a major breakthrough in our country’s research on reusable space technology,” said China’s state media agency Xinhua. reportedsuggesting that Chinese researchers have developed technology, such as heat shields and landing gear, specifically for reusable craft.
China, US companies Boeing and SpaceX and NASA are the only players to have launched and recovered reusable craft into orbit. While the initial cost is high, the cost of operating reusable craft is a fraction of that of single-use craft, making reusable spacecraft attractive when a mission requires multiple flights. The nine-month mission is likely a second test of the reusable spacecraft. In September 2020, China returned a reusable experimental spacecraft that had spent two days in orbit.
imitate Boeing?
The spacecraft likely resembles a US spaceplane, the Boeing X-37B, according to Kevin Pollpeter, a senior researcher at the Center for Naval Analyses, a US government-funded research and analysis organization in Arlington, Virginia. X-37B’s purpose is unknown, but he says the Chinese government was concerned about the craft’s military capabilities when it was unveiled in 2010.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian in Boston, Massachusetts, agrees that China’s experimental spacecraft could be a nod to Boeing’s X-37B spaceplane. McDowell says satellite observations show the spacecraft hovering and landing at Lop Nur military base in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, suggesting it is an aircraft. Some other reusable spacecraft, such as SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, are modules attached to launch rockets that rely on parachutes to land.
Like the X-37B, the Chinese vehicle appears to be quite small. The Chinese media reported that the spacecraft launched last August from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China on a Long March 2F rocket, which China used to launch its Shenzhou crewed space missions. Given that the launcher’s maximum payload is 8.4 tons, the spaceplane likely weighs between 5 and 8 tons, McDowell says — much smaller than NASA’s retired space shuttles that performed manned missions, including Colombia And Challenger.
While the current model is too small to carry crew members, McDowell says he wouldn’t be surprised if the country introduces a larger spacecraft for manned missions in the future.
Capture satellite?
China may be testing several technologies that could advance its space ambitions, McDowell says. Changing orbits in the orbit or deploying solar panels are just two examples of the kind of mid-orbit maneuvers that could be useful to perfect.
The release and capture of satellites while in orbit may also have been tested. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington DC, the spaceplane released an object detected last October. The object appeared to disappear from orbit in January before reappearing in March, according to McDowell, who tracks the spacecraft using US Space Force data. One possible explanation, he says, is that the spaceplane captured the object and carried it as cargo before releasing it again. That would suggest that the spaceplane has a payload capacity, meaning it could be used to carry instruments and satellites. The maneuver, which he says could have been performed with a robotic arm, could have been a satellite maintenance and repair exercise.
“[The Chinese] have worked extensively with robotic arms in other contexts, such as the Chinese space station and other satellite maintenance experiments,” says McDowell. For example, last year China lifted a defunct satellite from orbit using another satellite.
The Xinhua story of the spacecraft landing emphasized “the peaceful use of space”. McDowell notes that China, with many spy satellites already in space, doesn’t necessarily need a space plane for that. But China’s space program is largely run by the military, and as a result, space missions are often secretive, Pollpeter says. “I think the tendency is to release less information rather than more information, because even if they use it for something like satellite maintenance and repair, that doesn’t mean it can’t be used for more offensive or more military activities. . ”
This article is reproduced with permission and was first print on May 18, 2023.