ANU astrophysicist and cosmologist Dr Brad Tucker says China has launched a reusable space plane.
“It’s quite secretive; they didn’t announce exactly what the nature of the project is but based on estimates of what was launched and where it’s gone, it appears to be something like a small space shuttle,” he told Sky News Australia.
“A lot smaller than how the space shuttle was but more importantly, it doesn’t have humans in it, and it’s very similar, we think, to what we call the X37B.”
Dr Tucker said the X37B was a Boeing-built United States plane, which is not designed for human transportation but can go to space, stay in orbit and can be operated remotely “like a drone”.
“It has this weird combination of being an activity like a satellite, a platform for putting things in space but landing to be reused,” he said.
“Now, the US’ one, we’ve known, can stay up there for literally years in orbit, landing safely, and then being relaunched.”
Dr Tucker said there was a Chinese test of a similar rocket a few years ago, but the craft only stayed in orbit for three days.
Discussion about this post