By Gerry Doyle
SINGAPORE/ZHUHAI, China (Reuters) - State-owned aerospace company AVIC unveiled China's first commercial uncrewed spaceplane at the country's biggest air show in Zhuhai on Tuesday, with a mission of supplying the Chinese space station.
A model of the craft, dubbed Haoloong-1, or Sky Dragon, was on display at the company's air show exhibition site. Although the spaceplane is still in development, the company said that it could further reduce the cost of taking cargo out of the earth's atmosphere.
State-controlled media outlet China Daily said the craft brought "a low-cost reusable cargo shuttle solution with Chinese characteristics to space exploration". The China Manned Space Agency awarded the spaceplane a contract for engineering flight verification on Oct. 29, the outlet reported.
Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said the project could be a step to gain technology experience with spaceplanes before building crewed versions.
Spaceplanes, which launch atop a rocket booster into orbit but return to Earth as a glider and land on a conventional runway, have long been seen as efficient designs for reusable spacecraft.
The U.S. Space Shuttle, which was retired in 2011, used a complex system of heat-dissipating tiles to handle the extreme friction of reentry at nearly 20 times the speed of sound. Modern designs can use simpler heatshields with advanced materials that are lighter and easier to maintain.
The Shuttle carried astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), a role now filled by SpaceX's Dragon, and Russian Soyuz and Progress capsules. U.S. company Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane was recently awarded a NASA contract to carry cargo to orbit.
China has been flying a military spaceplane for years, keeping it in space for months at a time. Little is known about what it is used for, but experts say the ability to deploy and retrieve objects from orbit - such as small satellites - could have immense military value.
The U.S. also operates a military spaceplane, the Boeing (NYSE:BA) X-37B, which has spent years in orbit at altitudes up to 38,000 kilometres.
The first modules of China's space station launched into orbit in 2021; there have been eight crews sent there so far. The ISS has been in orbit for 25 years and has been continuously occupied since 2000.
The air show in Zhuhai runs from Tuesday to Nov. 17.