China has landed a mysterious spacecraft that has spent nine months in Earth orbit, making the country one of the few nations to successfully operate a reusable spacecraft. China has not released details about the spacecraft’s design and operations, but aerospace engineers have pieced together information gleaned from the pieces to come up with a complete picture of the spacecraft, which has potential military uses as well as research. drawing.
China’s state media Xinhua reported that “the complete success of this experiment marks an important advance in our country’s research on reusable spacecraft technology,” adding that Chinese researchers are working to develop reusable spacecraft, such as heat shields and landing gear. He suggested that he had developed a technology specific to a possible spacecraft.
China, U.S. Boeing, SpaceX and NASA are the only companies to launch and recover orbiting reusable aircraft. Although the initial cost is high, reusable spacecraft operate at a fraction of the operating cost of expendable spacecraft, making reusable spacecraft attractive when missions require several flights. is. The nine-month mission will likely be the second test of the reusable spacecraft. In September 2020, China returned a reusable experimental spacecraft that spent two days in orbit.
Boeing imitation?
The spacecraft is likely similar to the U.S. spaceplane Boeing X-37B, said Kevin Polpeter, a senior researcher at the Center for Naval Analysis, a U.S. government-funded research and analysis agency in Arlington, Virginia. The purpose of the X-37B is unknown, but when the X-37B was revealed in 2010, the Chinese government was concerned about the aircraft’s military capabilities, he said.
Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Boston, Massachusetts, agrees that China’s experimental spacecraft may be a copycat of Boeing’s X-37B spaceplane. McDowell said satellite sensing showed the spacecraft gliding and landing on a runway at the Lop Nur military base in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, suggesting it was a plane. said. 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, this Chinese vehicle appears to be fairly small. According to Chinese media reports, the spacecraft was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China in August last year on a Long March second-stage rocket, which China used to launch the Shenzhou manned space mission. Given the launch vehicle’s maximum payload of 8.4 tons, McDowell said the spaceplane would probably weigh between 5 and 8 tons, more than NASA’s retired space shuttles that have carried out manned missions. much smaller. Columbia and Challenger.
Current models are too small to carry a crew, but McDowell said he wouldn’t be surprised if the country introduced a larger spaceplane for manned missions in the future.
Satellite capture?
China could be testing a variety of technologies that could further its space ambitions, McDowell said. Altering orbit or deploying solar panels are just two examples of in-orbit maneuvers that help perfect him.
Deploying and capturing satellites in orbit could also have been tested. A spaceplane was detected ejecting an object last October, according to a report by the Institute for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, DC think tank. The object appears to have disappeared from orbit in January and reappeared in March, said McDowell, who uses US Space Force data to track the probe. One possible explanation, he said, is that the spaceplane captured the object, carried it as cargo, and released it again. It suggests that the spaceplane has cargo capacity, which means it can be used to transport equipment and satellites. The maneuver could have been accomplished with a robotic arm, he said, but it could have been an exercise in satellite maintenance and repair.
“[The Chinese] We’ve done a lot of research with robotic arms in other contexts, such as the Chinese space station and other satellite maintenance experiments,” McDowell said. For example, last year China used another satellite to remove a defunct satellite from orbit.
A Xinhua article about the spacecraft landing emphasized the “peaceful use of space.” McDowell points out that China doesn’t necessarily need a spaceplane for that purpose because there are already many reconnaissance satellites in space. But China’s space program is largely run by the military, and as a result, its space missions tend to be covert, says Paul Peter. “Instead of releasing more information, I think they tend to release less information because even if they are using the information for things like maintenance and repair of satellites, it is more offensive or more It does not mean that it cannot be used for military activities.”
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on May 18, 2023.
