China’s reusable space plane has completed its second mission after spending more than 200 days in orbit. The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) said the vehicle landed on Monday (8), without disclosing details of the spacecraft’s return location or time.
This time, the mission lasted 276 days, during which the plane performed different orbital maneuvers; already in the last few weeks, he began to prepare to go down. On its last flight, in August last year, the mission lasted just four days.
There is no information about the landing site, but it is likely that the plane landed at the Lop Nur military base in the Xinjiang region. The estimate comes from astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who identified data that indicated the passage of the space plane in the early morning of the 8th.
The mission seems to have been a success, and suggests an important advance in the development of technologies for reusable space vehicles in the country. Last year, the space plane project received financial support from the Natural Science Foundation of China.
This isn’t the only space plane under development in China. In September 2022, the Chinese Academy of Launch Vehicle Technologies (CALT) approved the development of a kind of hypersonic aircraft, which promises to deliver worldwide in just one hour.
Source: Via: SpaceNews
