Kuang-Chi, NanoRacks Partner On Suborbital Helium Spacecraft

Rendition of Kuang=Chi’s Travel spacecraft in near space. Photo: Kuang-Chi.

Kuang-Chi Science and NanoRacks announced a partnership to cooperate on Kuang-Chi’s near-space helium spacecraft, the Traveler. The partnership will focus on the development of the Traveler program outside of China, leveraging Kuang-Chi’s near-space technology and NanoRacks’ experience in both in-space business development and customer marketing.

Kuang-Chi’s Traveler is a platform that offers access to suborbital space for tourism and commercial applications, from ecological and terrestrial observation to satellite deployment and space research. The Traveler will use high-altitude helium buoyancy to transport people and payloads into near space, 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) above the Earth. Kuang-Chi and NanoRacks seek to cooperate to establish the Traveler as a commercially viable solution from a number of locations in China and worldwide.

The Traveler program is nearing the commercial market, having conducted a series of successful test flights in New Zealand and China in recent years. The most recent test mission reached a height over 21 kilometers and successfully transported a live turtle in a high-altitude cabin, Kuang-Chi stated.