{"id":106563,"date":"2020-05-05T10:03:37","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T17:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/china-just-tested-a-spacecraft-that-could-fly-to-the-moon-and-beyond"},"modified":"2020-05-05T10:03:37","modified_gmt":"2020-05-05T17:03:37","slug":"china-just-tested-a-spacecraft-that-could-fly-to-the-moon-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/china-just-tested-a-spacecraft-that-could-fly-to-the-moon-and-beyond","title":{"rendered":"China just tested a spacecraft that could fly to the moon and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/china-just-tested-a-spacecraft-that-could-fly-to-the-moon-and-beyond2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>China is getting ready to build a new space station. On 5 May, the Chinese Long March 5B rocket \u2013 the same rocket that is planned to lift parts of a new space station into orbit and eventually carry astronauts to space \u2013 launched for the first time from Hainan Island.<\/p>\n<p>For this test flight, the rocket carried with it an unnamed crew capsule. No astronauts were aboard this trip, but according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/2020\/05\/05\/chinas-first-long-march-5b-rocket-launches-on-crew-capsule-test-flight\/\">China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation<\/a> it will be able to carry six people at a time, twice as many as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/dn8146-chinas-shenzhou-spacecraft-the-divine-ship\/\">Shenzhou spacecraft<\/a> that has been used for all the country\u2019s other crewed missions.<\/p>\n<p>After it reached orbit, Long March 5B dropped off the crew spacecraft, which will undergo a few tests in space before plunging back to Earth in the next few days. This re-entry will test the spacecraft\u2019s heat shields, parachutes and airbags. The crew capsule is designed to be reusable and to carry astronauts to the new space station, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2207338-nasa-is-going-back-to-the-moon-but-most-people-in-the-us-dont-want-to\/\">to the moon<\/a> and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China is getting ready to build a new space station. On 5 May, the Chinese Long March 5B rocket \u2013 the same rocket that is planned to lift parts of a new space station into orbit and eventually carry astronauts to space \u2013 launched for the first time from Hainan Island. For this test flight, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}