Country’s first private rocket roars into sky from buzai232's blog

China’s first carrier rocket designed and built by a private company was launched on 17 May from a test base in north-western China. The OS-X suborbital rocket, developed and made by One-Space Technology in Beijing, flew for 306 seconds and travelled 170 miles through the atmosphere before falling back to the ground, the company said.To get more tech news china, you can visit shine news official website.

With a length of 29.5ft and a weight of 7.2 tons, the rocket reached a hypersonic speed of Mach 5.7 (5.7 times the speed of sound, or 1.2 miles a second). It reached an altitude of 24 miles.

The mission verified the rocket’s overall design and reliability, the company said. It fulfilled a long, controllable flight, carrying a payload for Shenyang Aircraft Design and Research Institute, affiliated to Aviation Industry Corp of China, obtaining a great deal of data for the rocket designers and the institute.

The company said the craft adopted several instruments that were new to Chinese rockets, such as the drag-mitigating pole and built-in communications devices.
Inspired by Elon Musk and his legendary company SpaceX, at least four private Chinese companies – OneSpace, LandSpace, LinkSpace and i-Space – have announced plans to develop, make and launch carrier rockets. Through the mission on 17 May, OneSpace has become the first to realise the goal.

Research and development of the OS-X took only one year. OneSpace said its designers and engineers can develop and produce almost all key parts of a rocket, and that many of them have worked for State-owned space contractors.

OS-X’s maximum speed is Mach 20, or 4.2 miles a second. The rocket will be used mainly to conduct proof-of-concept flights for new-concept aircraft or spacecraft developed by OneSpace’s customers to verify their aerodynamic designs. Many domestic institutes have designed new kinds of aircraft and spacecraft, and they need to be tested on top of a rocket to see whether their design will work.

OneSpace, established in 2015, a year now widely deemed as the opening chapter of China’s commercial space industry, has become a rising star in the country’s space arena, which has long been dominated by State-owned giants. Its rapid growth has been possible thanks to the government’s efforts to foster the commercial space sector and encourage participation from private companies.

The company has taken advantage of the government’s measures to get the civilian and defence sectors to work more closely with one another, Shu Chang, founder and chief executive of OneSpace, said at a news conference on 17 May after the launch.