i-Space completed a second vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing booster test.
https://nitter.net/CNSpaceflight/status/1733826205982531895
SQX-2Y reached 343.12m in this 63.15s hop test and landed on the target ~50m away from the liftoff position.
Slightly different angle: https://nitter.net/raz_liu/status/1733792656961282126#m
First orbital test of Hyperbola-3 currently NET 2025.
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Neat.
This will be like an Electron with a propulsively landed 1st stage.Edit: see correction belowThe only part that bugs me is that I confuse i-Space, the Chinese rocket company, with ispace, the Japanese lunar lander company.
A bit bigger than Electron, I think, since they’re skipping Hyperbola-2 (1.9 tons to LEO) and going straight to Hyperbola-3 (at least 8.5 tons to LEO). More like Neutron or a scaled-down (methalox) Falcon 9.
Yup, the name threw me for a loop as well.
Their respective Wikipedia pages each have “Not to be confused with i-Space (Chinese company)” and “Not to be confused with ispace (Japanese company)” at the top:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ispace_(Japanese_company)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Space_(Chinese_company)
Couldn’t one of them have at least picked a different letter?
Oops, I missed thay the hopper is for a bigger rocket than what they’re flying. Edited above.