Rocket Recovery Operations Overview

Right here, located in Minqin, Gansu, is

the recovery landing pad for Zhuque-3.

We can take a look at the whole

concrete area, which is 60 by 60,

or 3,600 square meters.

Now, stepping into this yellow area,

you reach its core zone,

which is what we commonly call the bullseye.

The area of this bullseye

is 900 square meters.

This entire zone is paved with

this special anti-ablation concrete.

Nine hundred square meters

sounds like a very large

area on land,

but you can imagine that

in this vast desert,

looking down from 100 kilometers up,

this might just be an area

the size of a fingertip.

We have further expanded the entire

surrounding area,

and now the total area

should be 100 by 100. Of course,

the extra 20 meters added on the side

is actually sand that underwent

a hardening treatment,

without laying any concrete, right?

In other words, after Y1,

not only has the rocket

undergone some improvements,

but the recovery pad has also undergone

iterations and upgrades. Yes, back then,

including all these cameras around

the desert, as well as the Wi-Fi

and optical fibers, we also made them

redundant by laying

another fiber optic line. A foundation was dug here,

and inside, the reinforced

concrete was driven down,

followed by concrete hardening.

And the concrete here isn't

just ordinary concrete, is it?

This area uses fire-resistant concrete.

When the rocket comes down,

as the engine approaches,

there is actually still fire

and high heat. If it were ordinary concrete,

it could explode directly from the heat,

which might affect

our landing stability.

This is our front-end telemetry

cabin used for recovery.

Yes. We mainly house some of our

critical equipment

inside the cabin.

It remains unmanned the entire time.

It mainly transmits and receives telemetry data.

In addition to transmitting telemetry data,

after the rocket returns to the ground,

they also have an important task,

which is emergency response,

and this work will be

completed by robots. This is our concentration

detector, which can crawl under the rocket

to measure the methane concentration.

This is a 360-degree skyward-facing

an image. It goes under the rocket,

and this dome camera checks the rocket's base,

so the ablation and everything can basically

rely on it

- to make an assessment.

- This is its water nozzle.

- Right. Fire suppression nozzle. Right.

These are its tracks. Right.

Your tracks are also adapted to the desert

- conditions, right? It's run many times already.

And if it detects

some potential small fires,

it can immediately go and perform

a fire extinguishing operation.