Chinese Company's First High-Altitude Vertical Recovery Flight Test of Rocket

TapTechNews September 22nd news, TapTechNews learned from the official WeChat public account of Jiangsu Deep Blue Aerospace Co., Ltd. that at 1:40 PM on September 22nd, Jiangsu Deep Blue Aerospace Co., Ltd. conducted the first high-altitude vertical recovery flight test of Nebula-1 at the 'Deep Blue Aerospace Ejina Banner Spaceport' in Inner Mongolia. The recoverable and reusable first-stage rocket body had an abnormality in the final landing stage of the flight test, and the test mission was not completely successful. According to the 'Test Outline of the First High-Altitude Vertical Recovery Flight Test of Nebula-1', among the 11 main test verification tasks in total, 10 of them were successfully completed in this flight test, and 1 was not completed.

The Nebula-1 rocket that carried out this flight mission is the first orbital-capable and recoverable commercial liquid rocket of Deep Blue Aerospace, and it is also an important carrier to breakthrough and verify the rocket vertical recovery and reuse technology. The diameter of the rocket body of Nebula-1 is 3.35 meters (about 11 feet), and the height of the first stage is about 21 meters (about 69 feet). It is equipped with the Thunder-R liquid oxygen kerosene engine, which is the first reusable liquid rocket engine in China that is fully independently developed by Deep Blue Aerospace and is integrally formed by 3D printing technology of high-temperature alloys for more than 90% of the main structure.

This flight test is the first high-altitude recovery test of an orbital-capable launch vehicle in China. The core task objective of the test is to verify the correctness and coordination of the work of each system in the vertical recovery stage after the Nebula-1 enters the orbit, especially to verify the multi-engine to single-engine variable power condition for the first time in the flight, and accumulate key data for the subsequent hundreds of kilometers recovery flight test and the final orbit + recovery test tasks.

The rocket ignited and took off with three engines according to the predetermined procedure. After reaching the predetermined height, the two side engines were shut down, relying on the thrust of a single engine to stabilize the attitude and decelerate and rise. After reaching the highest point, it relied on the thrust of a single engine to adjust and descend smoothly. After moving horizontally about 200 meters (about 656 feet), it successfully unlocked, unfolded and locked the landing legs at the predetermined height above the recovery field, but there was an abnormality in the final landing shutdown stage, resulting in partial damage to the rocket body. The entire flight duration of this flight test was 179 seconds, and the error between the rocket body before shutdown and the theoretical landing point was less than 0.5 meters (about 1.6 feet), and the rocket body finally landed precisely at the center of the recovery field. The flight mission profile of this test was in line with the predetermined procedure, and the whole process of test preparation and implementation was within the scope of the previous safety control plan. After the test, post-processing was carried out according to the predetermined emergency handling process, and no safety problems occurred throughout the process.

After the test and preliminary retrospective analysis of the test process data, in the final landing shutdown stage, there was an abnormality in the servo follow-up control command of the engine thrust adjustment, resulting in the landing height of the rocket body exceeding the design range, and the rocket body was partially damaged. The technical team of Deep Blue Aerospace will complete the task 'return to zero' as soon as possible to lay a solid foundation for the success of the subsequent recovery flight test. Based on the summary of this test and the technical fault return to zero basis, Deep Blue Aerospace will execute the high-altitude vertical recovery task again in November.