{"id":178354,"date":"2023-12-15T03:22:23","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T09:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/china-launches-secret-space-plane-on-3rd-ever-mission"},"modified":"2023-12-15T03:22:23","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T09:22:23","slug":"china-launches-secret-space-plane-on-3rd-ever-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/china-launches-secret-space-plane-on-3rd-ever-mission","title":{"rendered":"China launches secret space plane on 3rd-ever mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/china-launches-secret-space-plane-on-3rd-ever-mission2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hours prior to the secretive spacecraft\u2019s launch, SpaceX stood down from the 7th planned liftoff of the U.S. Space Force\u2019s own X-37B reusable space plane, and even removed the Falcon Heavy rocket containing it from the Kennedy Space Center launch pad. The mission, known as USSF-52, was scrubbed on Wednesday (Dec. 13) to \u201cperform additional system checkouts.\u201d Exact reasons for this delay remain unknown, and a new date has yet to be set for launch.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related: <\/strong><a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/china-space-plane-lands-may-2023\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/china-space-plane-lands-may-2023\">China\u2019s mysterious space plane returns to Earth after 9-month orbital mission<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Much like the X-37B, little is known about China\u2019s reusable space plane, subbed Shenlong, or \u201cDivine Dragon.\u201d From what bits of information are available to the public, though, the spacecraft appears to be used for testing new payloads and orbital operations. It launches vertically atop a rocket, conducts its mission and then lands horizontally on a runway similar to NASA\u2019s <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/16726-space-shuttle.html\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/16726-space-shuttle.html\">space shuttle<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hours prior to the secretive spacecraft\u2019s launch, SpaceX stood down from the 7th planned liftoff of the U.S. Space Force\u2019s own X-37B reusable space plane, and even removed the Falcon Heavy rocket containing it from the Kennedy Space Center launch pad. The mission, known as USSF-52, was scrubbed on Wednesday (Dec. 13) to \u201cperform additional [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178354","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\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}