China has presented the design of the Haolong cargo spaceplane. It is designed to deliver cargo to the Tiangong orbital station.
China currently uses the Tianzhou spacecraft to supply the Tiangong station. It can deliver about 7 tons of cargo into orbit. However, Tianzhou is not capable of returning cargo back to Earth since it does not have a capsule that can withstand re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The China National Space Administration is actively working on a solution to this problem. It should be a cargo spaceplane, a vehicle that would launch into space on a rocket and then return to Earth and land horizontally on a runway like an airplane. The China Aviation Industry Corporation recently unveiled a design for such a vehicle developed by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute. It was named Haolong.
The Haolong spaceplane is 10 meters long, 8 meters wide and weighs 7 tons. The developers have not named the exact mass of the cargo it will be able to deliver into orbit and return to Earth. But they expect the winged spacecraft to play an important role in the history of Tiangong station. China plans to expand the orbital complex in the future, which will require supplying it with more cargo.
Haolong is currently in the engineering validation phase. The process of building the vehicle itself will be next. It is not yet known when the first space flight may take place.
Recall that Sierra Nevada is also developing a cargo spaceplane called Dream Chaser. Its first mission to the ISS is scheduled for 2025.
Provided by Space.com
