"Five!"
"Four!"
"Three!"
"Two!"
"One!"
"Zero!"
"Ignition!"
Pale blue arcs of light burst forth, extending from the tips of the outward-splayed wings behind the spaceplane.
Trailing a long, azure plume, the Rosy Glow launched from the Jinling Aerospace Launch Center and vanished into the clouds under the watchful eyes of all the ground crew, engineers, and command personnel.
The launch proceeded flawlessly.
After leaving the troposphere, the Rosy Glow's pair of short, stout auxiliary wings slowly rotated, lowering the angle of the nozzles connected to their tips and gradually pitching the nose upward.
At the same time, the azure plume behind the wings expanded, beginning to work directly against gravity and pushing the Rosy Glow along a trajectory tangent to Earth, toward the boundless depths of space beyond.
Time passed second by second.
After nearly an hour of flight, the Rosy Glow finally lived up to expectations, smoothly breaking through the edge of the dense atmospheric layer and reaching Low Earth Orbit, where it began a seventy-two-hour orbital flight.
Seated in the cockpit, test pilot Xu Zhenghong, in the captain's seat, carefully checked the orbital altitude, the spacecraft's surface temperature, and the various other readings on the instruments.
After confirming that everything was normal, his tense expression finally relaxed as he slowly let out a breath.
This was his fifty-seventh test flight, and also the highest he had ever flown. Back when he had been in the test pilot unit, he had never imagined that one day he would fly an aircraft beyond the atmosphere.
Until one day, when his superiors came to him and assigned him the Rosy Glow's test flight mission...
The aircraft was equipped with an escape pod, but whether that thing would actually work, only heaven knew.
He reached out and activated autopilot, then disconnected his