 In a bit of exciting news, China announced that they're working on a space plane that they're hoping to put online in 2020. Now, not a lot is known about the space plane. As a matter of fact, this isn't even a picture of the exact space plane. It's more rendering. But the details of the said space plane are extremely enticing. So according to Liu Shiquan, the vice director of the state owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, China is developing a space plane that can take off and land horizontally. Yep, that's right. You heard it correctly. Horizontally. Now, despite what the rest of the industry is working on, which is vertical takeoffs and landings, such as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, they obviously take off vertically and then they land that same rocket vertically as well. This concept is entirely different. They're planning to take off horizontally and then land horizontally. And even the space shuttle that the United States had or Russia's Buran space plane, that took off vertically, but that landed horizontally. So this is different. And in fact, I don't know of anything that's ever taken off horizontally and gone into orbit and then landed horizontally. The closest would be the X-15. Now the X-15 was launched horizontally on the underside wing of a B-52 bomber. And then once it released, it would only kiss the edge of space and only some people's definition of the edge of space. And so it didn't get anywhere near orbital speeds, but then it did land again horizontally. So what China sounds like they're working on will be an entirely new system. And I'm really excited to hear more about it. But now don't forget that space planes, even though the United States ended the space shuttle program in 2011, we still have two space planes, one that's currently online and one that's about to go online. The United States has the X-37B, which is a semi-secretive space plane for the Air Force. And then we also have the upcoming Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser as well. And that will be riding on top of an Atlas V rocket. So again, the details aren't entirely out yet, but according to China, they're working on something really new and quite exciting by 2020. So if you wanna know more about this, make sure to subscribe to tomorrow. This on last week's show on orbit 10.42, we talked about the commercial crew program. So make sure and check that out if you missed it. But join us live every Saturday at 1800UTC. Make sure and join and subscribe and like to tomorrow. That does it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut, bringing space down to Earth for everyday people.