China successfully conducts carrier rocket’s vertical landing flight test

The Beijing Aerospace Institute of Automatic Control at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation successfully carried out a flight verification test of a carrier rocket’s vertical landing system with guidance and control technology on Monday, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The Space Intelligence Technology Innovation Center and a national key laboratory of aerospace intelligent control technology were responsible for the flight test and research.

The institute started the research and established a team for the project this year. The team designed and built a reusable small-sized test platform for vertical takeoff and landing to help carry out the tests.

The successful experiment demonstrated core technologies of inline path planning and relative navigation and guidance control with high precision.

Moreover, the technology will promote the development of a reusable space transportation system, in order to achieve a leap in development from single-use to reusable systems. It will also aid the transformation from single-voyage space transportation to a combination of transportation and operations.

In the future, the institute will amplify its efforts to make space transportation reliable, reusable and intelligent.