China has been working to advance its crewed spaceflight plans with endeavors like the Tiangong space stations. An important aspect of China’s plan is its new and unnamed spacecraft, which just had a successful test. The vessel launched on the country’s new heavy-lift rocket, orbited the Earth, and landed safely in a Chinese desert.
The spacecraft, designed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, looks like a scaled-up version of the country’s current capsule and bears more than a passing resemblance to the SpaceX Dragon 2. However, China’s new crew capsule doesn’t have the fancy propulsive landing capabilities of the SpaceX design. NASA currently requires SpaceX to land with parachutes in the ocean, but the company hopes to use the SuperDraco engines for landing in the future.
After reaching orbit, the spacecraft spent the next several days raising its orbit with seven engine burns to reach a maximum altitude of about 4,970 miles (8,000 kilometers). The unnamed prototype uses a trio of parachutes to slow its descent — the smaller Shenzhou capsule currently in service has just one. The new version also has airbags that deploy to further soften the landing, which is another notable upgrade over the previous design. The vessel also carried 10 payloads for science and technology verification.
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