China’s next-generation crew capsule received an updated schedule this week. According to Yang Liwei, deputy chief designer of China’s manned spaceflight program, the new capsule will make its maiden flight in 2027 or 2028. Reaching this deadline will be an important milestone in China’s recently announced plan for a moon landing by 2030.

The yet-to-be-named crew capsule has been in development since 2016. In June of the same year, a large-scale prototype vehicle was lifted as a test payload during the maiden flight of China’s Long March 7 medium-lift rocket.

By May 2020, a test car was developed and prepared for launch. It was launched into orbit on Long March 5B, where it spent two days before returning to Earth. The test flight tested the vehicle’s avionics system, but was mainly intended to demonstrate the vehicle’s re-entry capabilities, including a new heat shield, new parachutes, and an airbag landing system. According to the designers’ design, thermal protection should allow partial reuse of the car.

Yang, who was China’s first astronaut to reach orbit in 2003, described the return module test as “successful” and noted that five years of work has been underway to prepare the finished capsule for its maiden flight.

“The next generation spacecraft will be used for manned lunar missions, the construction of China’s space station, and deep space exploration,” Yang said in a speech at the university on July 18, 2023. Said.

This is a significant change from China’s existing Shenzhou manned spacecraft design, which is based on the architecture of Russia’s Soyuz capsules. In the 1990s, an aerospace technology exchange program between Russia and China led to the development of Shenzhou, which is slightly larger than the Soyuz but shares three module designs, including a service module, a reentry module, and an orbital module.

The new spacecraft will be even larger and can carry up to seven passengers. Depending on whether the mission is in low Earth orbit or deep space, there may be different versions of the service module. Zhang Hailian, another deputy chief designer of China’s manned spaceflight program, says the ability to carry 4-7 passengers opens up new opportunities for space tourism.

Recent updates to China’s lunar plans suggest that China’s missions to the moon will require two rockets. The first will carry a new spacecraft with astronauts on board, and the second will carry a 26-ton lunar vehicle. Unlike the Apollo missions, which perform docking maneuvers in Earth orbit, the two vehicles will dock in lunar orbit (despite being launched on the same rocket, the Apollo landing module and command module were not properly connected before reaching Earth orbit). NASA’s planned Artemis moon landing will also require two rockets, and astronauts will meet with the landing modules at a planned space station called the Lunar Gateway.

The Chinese landing module is designed to deliver two astronauts to the surface of the moon. Engineers also worked on a lunar rover and a mobile lab. Source