China has launched its first drone ship to recover reusable rockets \u2013 becoming only the second country after the United States to master the technology \u2013 as Beijing pushes forward with its ambitious space programme.<\/p>\n
The launch of the new vessel marks a major step forward for China\u2019s push to develop reusable rockets \u2013 a technology seen as vital to helping the country cut the cost of space travel and develop a commercial space industry<\/a>.Beijing aims to catch up with the US in an intensifying space race by replicating America\u2019s approach of combining state and private sector investment<\/a>, which paved the way for Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX to drive a series of technological breakthroughs.<\/p>\n The new vessel \u2013 named the Xingji Guihang, or \u201cInterstellar Return\u201d \u2013 was developed by the Beijing-based private aerospace firm iSpace, and it will eventually be used to recover reusable rockets developed by several Chinese manufacturers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe vessel is designed for the launch of iSpace\u2019s SQX-3 rocket later this year,\u201d the company said in an article published on Tuesday. \u201cIn the future, it will also be compatible with sea recovery missions for various medium-to-large reusable rockets.\u201d<\/p>\n Like SpaceX\u2019s drone ships, the iSpace vessel is equipped with a dynamic positioning system and can operate autonomously. It has a recovery deck area of 2,400 square metres \u2013 large enough to fit a returning first-stage rocket booster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China has launched its first drone ship to recover reusable rockets \u2013 becoming only the second country after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,3686,44121,512,3120,13688,44117,27544,31158,128,285,12331,44119,28179,2489,44118,44120],"class_list":["post-52786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beijing","tag-chengdu-industrial-investment-group","tag-china","tag-elon-musk","tag-falcon-9","tag-interstellar-return","tag-ispace","tag-jiangsu","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-x","tag-sqx-3-rocket","tag-starship","tag-us","tag-xingji-guihang","tag-yangzhou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}