Chinese commercial rocket firm Sepoch has successfully conducted a vertical takeoff and soft splashdown test of its Yuanxingzhe-1 (YXZ-1), a key milestone ahead of a potential orbital launch of the reusable vehicle later this year.<\/p>\n
The verification rocket lifted off from an elevated platform at the Haiyang spaceport in Shandong province at 4:40 p.m. Eastern (2040 GMT) on May 28, Sepoch, officially known as Beijing Jianyuan Technology Co., said in a statement. The test vehicle, also called Hiker-1<\/em> in English, reached an altitude of around 2.5 kilometers during the 125-second flight before performing a controlled propulsive descent and splashdown into the sea.<\/p>\n \u201cThe test was a complete success,\u201d the company said, noting the mission validated eight phases of flight: ignition and liftoff, full-thrust ascent, variable thrust control, engine shutdown, free descent, engine reignition, deceleration and hovering, and soft splashdown.<\/p>\n The rocket, built with thin-walled stainless steel, stands 26.8 meters tall, has a diameter of 4.2 meters, and a launch mass of about 57 tons. It is powered by Longyun methane-liquid oxygen engines developed by Jiuzhou Yunjian (JZYJ), a commercial propulsion firm that has supplied engines to other Chinese rocket developers.<\/p>\n Sepoch aims to use the Hiker-1 to deliver up to 10,000 kilograms of payload to low Earth orbit. The test lays groundwork for the rocket\u2019s first full flight later in 2025.<\/p>\n Founded in recent years, Sepoch has secured partnerships with satellite operator Shifang Xinglian to develop a medium Earth orbit satellite constellation, and with Alibaba\u2019s Taobao to explore rocket-based express logistics.<\/p>\n Hiker-1 is part of a growing list of reusable launch systems under development in China. Other contenders include Landspace\u2019s Zhuque-3, SAST\u2019s Long March 12A, Space Pioneer\u2019s Tianlong-3, iSpace\u2019s Hyperbola-3 and Galactic Energy\u2019s Pallas-1. SAST conducted a similar test in January, reportedly reaching an altitude of 75 kilometers, but has yet to confirm the results.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chinese commercial rocket firm Sepoch has successfully conducted a vertical takeoff and soft splashdown test of its Yuanxingzhe-1 (YXZ-1), a key milestone ahead of a potential orbital launch of the reusable vehicle later this year. The verification rocket lifted off from an elevated platform at the Haiyang spaceport in Shandong province at 4:40 p.m. Eastern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[135,7089,237,7090,647,6048],"class_list":["post-20616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-hiker-1","tag-landspace","tag-sepoch","tag-space-pioneer","tag-tianlong-3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20616"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}