A new Chinese carrier rocket made its maiden flight on 22nd December under the long-term place, very much like SpaceX, to come up with reusable launch vehicles. The whole idea behind reusing launch vehicles mainly centers around the fact that it reduces mission costs by a lot, and it also directly pertains to speeding up the launch schedules for commercial clients.
SpaceX is somewhat of an expert when it comes to reusing launch vehicles. The medium-lift Long March 8 Y-1 blasted off at 12:37 p.m. (0437 GMT) from the southern Chinese island of Hainan carrying five satellites.
China’s plans to develop reusable rockets fall under what they have termed the Long March 8 series over the course of the upcoming years. As mentioned before, this idea and initiative are very similar to that of the Falcon range of the private aerospace firm SpaceX.
Although Long March 8 made its maiden flight initiating which will inevitably be a long-drawn process, it is not clear yet if the flight itself, that the Long March 8 Y-1 was reusable. The future satellites and vehicles that are yet to come are expected to be capable of, as per the reports, vertical takeoff and vertical landing which will enable them to be used more than once.
In November 2020, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the country’s main space contractor, announced that it will develop its first VTVL (vertical takeoff and vertical landing) vehicle around 2025.
In July this year, China launched its first independent mission to Mars, and earlier this month, China brought back rocks and soil from the moon in the first lunar sample retrieval since 1976. Around 2022, China aims to complete a multi-module, inhabited space station.
China is hoping to complete this process by 2045, and by that time, they are hoping, they will be able to operate thousands of flights a year carrying tens of thousands of tonnes of cargo and passengers.
