Shenlong (spacecraft)

Shenlong, Chinese for Divine Dragon, is a small Chinese spaceplane test vehicle that became publicly known in December 2007, when photographs showed a slender winged craft slung under the belly of an H-6 medium bomber, the Chinese version of the Soviet Tu-16. Unsourced Chinese websites reported that it carried the program number 863-706, tying it to the 1986 People's Liberation Army program to strengthen China's advanced technology base, and that it was designed by Institute 611, which is associated with the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation. Scaling from the photographs, Encyclopedia Astronautica estimates a length of about 6.5 meters, a diameter of 0.8 meters and a drop mass near 4,500 kilograms, and it judges the vehicle unmanned, with a rocket nozzle at the rear that might mean a solid motor for supersonic boosting. What the craft was for is not settled: it may be a subscale aerodynamic model of a crewed spaceplane, a full-scale model of an unmanned spaceplane or boost-glide system, or only a test program that never led to an operational system.