AIBRIEF
Beijing based Galactic Energy's Pallas 1, designed for up to 25 flights, reached orbit for the first time on Tuesday; booster recovery is the next milestone.
Pallas-1, a two-stage liquid-propellant rocket built by private Beijing-based launch company Galactic Energy, reached orbit for the first time on Tuesday, lifting off at 10am from a self-built pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre's commercial pilot zone in northwestern Gansu.
The vehicle stands 52 metres tall with a 3.35-metre diameter, a lift-off mass of about 283 tonnes, and 350 tonnes-force of thrust from seven in-house liquid oxygen-kerosene engines called CQ-50. Galactic Energy designed Pallas-1 to carry up to 7 tonnes to low Earth orbit and to fly up to 25 times, putting the company on the short list of Chinese commercial players publicly testing reusable boosters.
Galactic Energy plans a sequence of re-entry control, grid fin, braking and deceleration tests before a full vertical landing, initially targeted at sea or on land, as a path to high-frequency commercial reuse.
The mission also fits Beijing's broader "space power" objective, which appeared for the first time in the latest five-year plan. Pallas-1's first orbit is the entry ticket into that test ladder. The reusable-launch proof is the recovery work that has not yet been attempted.