China Unveils Reusable Cargo Shuttle Design for Tiangong Space Station (Video)

China has unveiled a design for a new reusable shuttle that will carry cargo to and from the country's space station.

The Haolong space shuttle is being developed by the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute of the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). It's one of them two winning projects The project follows a call for proposals from the Chinese space agency CMSA to develop low-cost cargo spacecraft.

China is currently using its Tianzhou robotic spacecraft to send cargo there Tiangong space station. But I'm based on the example of NASA Promote commercial replenishment options For the International Space Station, CMSA wanted new, cost-effective ideas that could also return experiments and other cargo to Earth, unlike the Tianzhou, which burns up on re-entry.

Haolong will launch on a rocket and land horizontally on a runway on Earth. The Space Shuttle is 32.8 feet (10 meters) long and 26.2 feet (8 m) wide and weighs less than half that Tianzhou Capsule that has a mass of up to 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms). The winged spacecraft is currently in the technical flight verification phase, meaning its design and systems are being reviewed before construction.