Category China in Space

The crowd had been waiting for some time. Hundreds had gathered beside the concrete apron outside the suiting and crew-preparation area. Thirty or forty women were dressed in the bright blues and reds of traditional Chinese dress. They had big red and yellow tom-toms all ready, while the other well-wishers had brought flowers. It was a youthful population, but then most of those who work in the Chinese space program are in their twenties. To help their wait, a band played some lively military tunes. An American astronaut, Leroy Chiao, who had flown into space from both Cape Canaveral and Russia’s Baikonour, once compared the sterile, clinical, crowdless atmosphere of an American launch with the riotous joy of departing from Baikonour. Well, China’s Jiuquan is closer to the Russian tradition.

The doors opened and out stepped into the bright sunshine three astronauts – “yuhangyuan” in Chinese – who were about to embark on China’s fourth, most ambitious manned space mission. Their target was to chase, rendezvous, and dock with an orbital laboratory, Tiangong, which had been circling the Earth since the previous September and set up China’s first space station. Walking a few feet apart in a line were, in the middle, mission commander and veteran Jing Haipeng; on his left, operator Liu Wang, on his first mission; and on his right and the main focus of attention, China’s first space woman, Liu Yang. As they walked stiffly, ever so shghtly hunched forward (spacesuits are not designed for walking), the thronging crowds cheered and waved their flowers while the band struck up a quicker march. The three astronauts carried a small air-conditioning box, like a workman’s toolbox, as they walked along the crowd and waved. The three stopped to give a peremptory report to the commander and boarded their bus. Five buses set out for the pad, preceded by a jeep and motorcycle escort, down the green-lined avenue near the astronaut quarters. More crowds lined the route as the band played on, others rushing forward along the grass verge to keep up with the slow convoy and take pictures.

The convoy then arrived in the cool shadow of the launch tower, a huge structure of girder, levels, and scaffolds. Assistants in blue coveralls and face masks helped the astronauts out. The three stood together, reporting to the state commission, waved, and walked forward into the base of the pad to take the lift to the top. The lift

B. Harvey, China in Space: The Great Leap Forward, Springer Praxis Books,

DOI 10.1007/978-l-4614-5043-6_l, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

brought them up the vast structure. They emerged from the lift, to be greeted by red – uniformed assistance crew.

Their Long March 2F rocket had been in Jiuquan launch center for two months now. In early April, it left its assembly room in Beijing, the workers standing to attention and saluting as it rolled out on the railway line that came right into the factory. It was then put on the flat of its back for the long, two-day journey to the north-west, heading into the desert of Gansu, to Jiuquan, the town meaning “oasis” that marks the end point of the Great Wall. The rocket reached the launch center on 9th April, preceded by the Shenzhou manned space cabin that would be lifted by crane to its top.

But who would fly? China had recruited three groups of astronauts. The first were selected in April 1971 on an abortive, hopelessly ambitious and quickly abandoned attempt to put astronauts into space in the 1970s. When the manned space program was restarted in the 1990s, 14 astronauts were recruited and from this group was drawn the mission commander Jing Haipeng, aged 45. He had already been in space before on Shenzhou 7 four years earlier, flying on the mission for China’s first space walk, and had been promoted to brigadier. Also drawn from this group was Liu Wang, at age 42 its youngest member, who, before that, had served six years in the Air Force with over 1,000 hours’ flying time and was also a brigadier. China had recruited a third group in 2010 – five men and two women, all Air Force pilots. In December 2011, the selectors had identified, from this pool of Groups 2 and 3, seven men and two women who would fly the next two missions, Shenzhou 9 and 10. Originally, the first crew was to comprise three men and the second crew (Shenzhou 10) would include a woman but, in March 2012, chief designer Qi Faren announced that a woman would fly on Shenzhou 9. Who would she be?

There had been two finalists: Air Force pilots Major Yang Waping, aged 32, and Major Liu Yang, aged 33. Their identity had become known the previous year when postage stamps of their historic mission had been released accidentally prematurely. There had been quite a row, it seems, about their final selection. Liu Yang was the best connected and married to another Air Force pilot. The selection led to lively internet posting and blogs about the decision and it is reported that Wang Yaping’s father, Wang Lijun, posted a blog expressing his concerns that all the media attention would lead to his daughter’s “losing the flight” – but the post was removed, we do not know by whom, within 24 hr. In the end, Liu Yang was selected and the announcement had been made the previous day. She proved a good choice, being personable with the media, and it was made clear that Wang Yaping would get her chance on a later Shenzhou mission. Even as they boarded their bus, their backup crew stood ready to take over if one became suddenly ill, but their members must have known that their chances were fading fast. The backups were, aside from Wang Yaping, mission commander and Shenzhou 6 veteran Nie Haisheng, and another member of the second group, Zhang Xiaoguang.

Their spacecraft, Shenzhou 9, had been fuelled up two weeks earlier on 29th May. Stacked onto its Long March 2F rocket, they had rolled out to the desert launch pad

on 9th June. The two crews for the mission arrived from Beijing that very day for final preparations and training. The last thing that Liu Yang did before leaving was to phone her mother-in-law to tell her of the upcoming flight and not to worry.

China had never launched a Shenzhou spaceship in summer before and weather was a concern in the days up to the launch, for two reasons. First, the summer heat could well trigger off storms that would delay a launch; and, second, although the nitric acid fuels of the rocket can be stored for a long time at room temperature, they begin to become a problem when temperatures rise. Weather balloons were released in the days up to the launch to test the air for its stability: so far, so good. The crew boarded the rocket two hours before launch. They entered through the orbital module at the top, squeezing slowly and carefully into the lower, beehive-shaped descent module, Liu Yang in the left seat, Liu Wang in the right seat, and commander Jing Haipeng coming down the tunnel last to sit in the middle. They settled down for the wait as the final checks were completed.

As was now the norm, the launch was covered live on Chinese television. The white rocket with the Chinese flag could be seen against the brown desert and flat horizon, stacked beside the huge structure of its blue and light-green steel tower. No more than in Baikonour, they do not do countdown clocks in Jiuquan, so watchers had to listen to the audio commentary to know how close they were to launch (though the launch time of 18:37 local time had been given a week earlier).[1] The one – minute mark was announced and the small red girders of the swing arms moved back from the rocket. It now stood on its own. At 10 sec, the final countdown was called in Chinese.

The cameras zoomed in at the base of the rocket. There was a sudden thud as the nitric fuels ignited and, within a second, the rocket began to rise. The ascent of the Long March 2F is initially slow and dead straight but, after half a minute, it begins to bend over and accelerate in its climb. Ground cameras caught it as it sped upward. Infrared cameras showed the bright engine lights burning. The events of the third minute into the mission are quite dramatic. First, at 130 sec, the pin-shaped escape tower is fired off the top and tumbles away. At 160 sec, the four strap-on boosters spin away, followed by the entire first stage, which drops back. After a brief pause, the second stage ignites and, at 200 sec, the payload fairing is blown off the top. Natural light now floods into the cabin. An inside color camera view showed commander Jing Haipeng in the middle, Liu Yang on his left, and Liu Wang on his right, their feet tucked up in their contoured seats. They appeared relaxed, with no vibration evident.

A bow-shaped shock wave formed around the rocket as it headed into the far distance, a mere pin-prick now barely visible from the ground where, meantime, a cloud of brown smoke had risen from the pad. The rocket now tracked south-east, well south of Beijing, to cross the Chinese coast at the Yellow Sea and head over the Pacific. It had now reached altitude and, as the second stage burned, the rocket was essentially horizontal, building up the speed necessary to achieve orbital velocity. Look-back cameras gave almost vertiginous views of the ground falling away and the horizon turning from a flat line into a curved shape. Within eight minutes, Shenzhou 9 was almost in orbit. Next, cameras on the rocket showed the separation of the cabin from the rocket, as a shower of water droplets spilt free. They had reached orbit, to applause in mission control while the three astronauts waved and clasped hands in celebration. Jing Haipeng’s clipboard could be seen floating free when they became weightless. The initial orbit was 261-315 km, exactly as hoped for.

No sooner had they arrived in orbit than television cameras on the outside of the craft showed the two solar panels stretch open. At the time, Shenzhou 9 was passing over the Yuan Wang 5 tracking ship and there were brief interruptions as it acquired the signal, the images from the cabin occasionally breaking up. Had the panels failed to open, the crew would have had no electrical power and been obliged to make an emergency landing an orbit later in an ellipse marked out in western China.

They took off their spacesuits and moved into blue coveralls. They opened the tunnel into the larger, more spacious orbital module at the front. Crammed into Shenzhou were experiments and 300 kg of water and food. Media coverage of the launch was intense in China, inevitably focused on Liu Yang, now set to become one of the most famous women in China’s history. Media found their way to her home town to interview her family, school mates, and Air Force colleagues. Liu Yang was the 56th woman in space, but the launch made China only the third country to have launched a woman into space by itself. She was launched on the 49th anniversary, to the day, of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963.

The next two days were uneventful as Shenzhou chased Tiangong in orbit. Three changes of path were required for Shenzhou to close the distance with Tiangong, the first being to lift the low point from 261 to 315 km. The following day, at 14:40 UT on 17th June, Shenzhou adjusted its orbit to 315-326 km. By the morning of the 18th, Shenzhou had closed the distance to the station and both were circling the Earth at 343 km. At 53-km distance, Shenzhou began pinging Tiangong with its radar. Black-and-white cameras had been installed on both Tiangong and Shenzhou, following the one approaching the other on a split screen at mission control. As Shenzhou came in, entirely under automatic control at 20 cm/sec, the petals of the docking mechanism became ever clearer, opening like jaws to close with the ring on Tiangong.

There was a shudder as the two came together at 06:08 UT on 18th June. Air was squirted into the docking tunnel and the pressures of Shenzhou, the tunnel, and Tiangong equalized. Three hours later at 09:10, when the combined spacecraft were back over Chinese territory, the hatch was opened into Tiangong and Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang floated through, leaving Liu Yang temporarily in Shenzhou. The inside of Tiangong was a long cylindrical box shape, with small straps installed at points all along the four walls for the astronauts to hold in weightlessness. On one wall, there were three computer screens for the astronauts to operate while on

another was a Chinese flag. There was a food heater and a hidden toilet. After a short period, all three astronauts presented themselves together in front of the television camera to report and salute, to stormy applause in mission control. The Tiangong station was declared operational: China had, at last, built an orbital space station. President Hu Jintao came to mission control to formally congratulate them in a telecast.

Every evening, Chinese television followed the progress of the astronauts as they worked in the laboratory in their blue coveralls. Liu Yang exercised on a bicycle which could be unfolded from a wall. Her fellow crewmembers operated the computer and conducted experiments. On the 21st, they spoke to their families in ground control. The normal pattern was for two to sleep in Tiangong and one in Shenzhou. For experienced space watchers, the cabin was smaller than the Soviet Salyut station and nearer to the size of the Spacelab module that used to be carried by the Space Shuttle.

They carried out 10 medical experiments. Ground controllers reported on the food they were eating, such as rice pudding. Whereas previous space travelers relied on biscuits and toothpaste-tube food, this mission boasted a much-improved menu with 70 different items, mainly traditional Chinese food. On the new menu were sweet-and-sour, bean curd, spicy food, and rice with fried dishes. Besides Uve communications, they communicated to the ground by e-mail, with photos, text, and videos. Liu Wang could be seen playing the harmonica to send birthday greetings to his wife. Liu Yang could be seen with her laptop. According to her, weightlessness made her feel “like a fish swimming freely in water”. It was a week of scientific achievement for China because, that very week, the submersible Jiaolong was exploring inner space, diving 6,965 m deep into the Marianas Trench in the Pacific.

After a week on board, the time for one of the most important tests of the mission came: undocking and then re-docking manually. Manual docking was an important maneuver to test should, on a future mission, the automatic control system break down. Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang had rehearsed the maneuver 1,500 times in simulations, but real events can always throw up surprises. First, on the 22nd, Tiangong’s orientation system was turned off and Liu Wang went into Shenzhou to test the maneuvering engines of the smaller spacecraft. The next day, 23rd June, was the big day, for they faced the challenge of undocking from the station, retreating to a distance of 400 m, and then re-docking, but under manual control. It coincided with the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, in advance of which they sent greetings to all those involved. Then, the three astronauts put on their spacesuits (a precaution against depressuriza­tion), squeezed back into the descent cabin of Shenzhou, undocked, and backed away under automatic control to a distance of 400 m. They separated at 03:10 UT.

A screen split three ways in mission control showed the two spacecraft pinging one another on the bottom, with data readout superimposed on the screen; the crew cabin with the three astronauts in their protective spacesuits but visors up on the right; and the spacecraft moving together in black-and-white images on the left. Liu Wang, called “the operator”, was in charge and he could be seen at the controls. Back on the Earth, ground controllers could be seen in their white doctor’s coats, with mission badges, headsets, and microphones.

At 140 m, the manual control system was activated and Shenzhou began to move forward. Displays clicked off the closing distances. The global tracking map indicated that the maneuver was taking place over the Horn of Africa. Now, the laser radar detector was switched on. At 100 m, Tiangong grew in size on the screen as the two spacecraft drew together at 40 cm/min. Tiangong was poorly lit but, when the screen switched to image Shenzhou, it was sharply visible, its solar panels shining in the bright sunlight over the curvature of the Earth. There was a continuous chatter of the mission controllers in the background. The cross of the docking marker was outlined in the cross-hairs of the closing Shenzhou’s camera. Shenzhou was imaged in beautifully clear detail as they closed the final meters. The connection was made absolutely smoothly, Shenzhou yawing just slightly after they met at 04:48 UT, 12:48 Beijing time, after an hour and a half flying separately. They then pulled together for the final tightening and hard dock. Within minutes this time, they re-entered the laboratory. Mission controllers allowed themselves a moment of applause, some giving the thumbs-up, before getting out of their seats to shake hands with colleagues, broad smiles all round.

Late on 27th June, the astronauts boarded the Shenzhou 9 cabin for the return to the Earth. The hatch into their orbital home was closed at 22:37 UT. There was a slight jolt as Shenzhou uncoupled at 01:22 UT early the following morning, the 28th, and moved steadily away. Liu Wang used manual control to back Shenzhou away to 5 km from Tiangong. At 04:35, he moved the spacecraft into a new orbit for re-entry. They had almost a day on Shenzhou to themselves as they prepared for landing early the following morning, 29th June (on the Russian Soyuz returning from the International Space Station (ISS), re-entry normally takes place only two orbits later).

The critical events took place over the South Atlantic Ocean approaching the coast of Africa. As Shenzhou came over one of the tracking ships at 01:16 UT, the orbital module was released: it would orbit the Earth for a couple of months before burning up in the upper layers of the atmosphere. A minute later, the retrorockets burned, the end of maneuver reported to the Chinese ground tracking station at Swakopmund on the Namibian coast. Shenzhou now began a curving descent over Africa, passing over the Malindi tracking station in Kenya and out over the Indian Ocean, with another tracking ship stationed off the Pakistan coast. Moments later, at 01:37, the descent module was released. The cabin was now on its own, 140 km over the Earth, tracking towards the next station in the chain, Karachi, Pakistan, its pathway taking it between Islamabad and New Delhi. Remarkably, cameras picked up the whole re-entry on infrared, identifying two big trails in the high atmosphere. The largest, a blob-shaped trail, was the service module, which grew brighter, flashed, broke up, and dissolved. Ahead raced a longer, steadier trail, like a meteor – the tiny Shenzhou cabin with its crew of three on board. Going through re-entry was like being inside a blowtorch, they all say, as the cabin is enveloped in gases that glow red and orange and yellow from the great heat. At the end of the four-minute blackout, the cabin had fallen to an altitude of 40 km above the Earth. Over northern China, the cameras continued to follow the spacecraft, the dark background turning to a very light blue as they spotted first the drogue, then the main parachute come out at around 10,000 m. The Shenzhou cabin could be seen twisting back and forth as it settled under the parachute ropes. It had 10 min to drift to the ground.

Mil-type helicopters were already in the air and their crews quickly spotted the descending cabin. The descent could now be followed from three spots: from the ground, at long range from a first helicopter, and then close up from a second that hovered over the parachute to observe the descent from above – a much more sophisticated operation than the norm in Kazakhstan when Soyuz comes down. The cabin was caught in a breeze and developed quite a side motion. It could now be seen venting unwanted fuel so as to reduce the risk of an accident at touchdown. Shenzhou could be seen clearly as it tracked over grasslands, criss-crossed by tracks and minor roads where rescue jeeps had gathered – including a truck with local farmers who had escaped the security cordon and saw everything. Shenzhou’s shadow could now be clearly seen against the ground, passing over a small river and, when the cabin moved to meet its shadow, it was obvious that touchdown was close. Wham! The cabin’s tipped into the ground, the four retrorockets fired in a puff of black smoke, the cabin tumbled end over end, and came to rest on its side. It gouged out quite an impression in the clay. A guillotine cut the parachute, which deflated and drifted lazily to the ground. Shenzhou had come to rest on a sandy slope beside a river in a small valley, on a desert floor of grasses and small shrubs. Touchdown time was 10:02 local time, 02:02 UT, at 42.2°N, 111.2°E. Blown by the strong wind, they came down some 16 km from the precise aim point, but still within the 36 x 36-km landing ellipse, about 1,000 km downrange from Jiuquan from where they had been launched two weeks earlier. There is a backup landing site just south of Jiuquan should the crew make a steep, ballistic re-entry. Both points were closed off to aircraft as the moment of landing approached.

The rescue teams rushed forward, dressed in red coveralls, the medical teams in white coveralls. They opened the hatch, which was close enough to the ground, so the crew must have been hanging out of their seats, restrained by their straps, facing downward at 45°. Medical rules require the crew to remain in the cabin for readjustment to gravity for up to 75 min, quite different from the standard Russian practice in which the crew is normally taken out straightaway. Rescuers passed in bottles of water, before they unstrapped and took the crew out one by one. There was another round of applause in mission control as Liu Yang emerged, smiling cheerfully, and the three were then placed side by side in directors’ chairs a few meters from the cabin. Three rescuers came forward and presented the crew, who saluted from their sitting position, with flowers. The three clasped their hands together in the air to a third round of stormy applause in mission control, where controllers had now been joined by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. This formally marked the end of their mission, for they could rise from their seats to congratulate their co-workers. Rescuers then lifted the three crewmembers together into a large waiting helicopter for an initial airborne medical examination and later return to Beijing. The mission had lasted 12 days 15 hr – more than twice as long as the previous longest Chinese space mission. They were sent for two weeks’ rest and debriefing, emerging to give press interviews on 16th July.

The mission had gone entirely smoothly, with no hitches, all the key points reported live in the Chinese media. In the space of two weeks, China had made its

longest space mission, sent its first woman into space, carried out first an automatic docking and then a manual one, and occupied its first space station – and this was only its fourth manned spaceflight. There was much cause for relief and celebration. No sooner was the mission over than China announced that Shenzhou 10 would repeat the mission early in 2013 [1]. Tiangong continued to circle the Earth, moving into a higher orbit of 354-365 km to be ready for another docking in six months’ time, while Shenzhou 9’s old orbital module was left behind in 333-354 km orbit, where it would eventually bum up.

Thus, China established its first space station in orbit around the Earth in summer 2012. But it was not the only station circling the Earth. Even as the three yuhangyuan left Tiangong, a much larger 470-tonne space station kept them company, albeit in a different orbit. Crewed by six astronauts and cosmonauts, its solar panels so big and bright as to make it the most visible object in the night sky, it was the ISS. By coincidence, three members of the ISS crew returned to the Earth only two days later, in another desert further to the west in Kazakhstan. So why had China built its own orbiting space station and how?

For its communications satellite program (Chapter 4), China sought a launch site as close to the equator as possible. Eighty sites were surveyed in 1972, shortlisted to 16 before Xi Chang in Sichuan was selected, apparently by Zhou Enlai personally. Defense concerns were uppermost, the benefits of being far inland outweighing considerations of difficult terrain, poor communications, and a dense rural population. Xi Chang was constructed in the course of 1978-82. The first launch rehearsal was conducted in 1983, with the center opening in January 1984. When it began to fly foreign communications satellites, Xi Chang was opened to visitors and, in the commercial spirit of modern China, tickets to see Moon missions were sold on the open market. It is the home of the Long March 3.

Xi Chang is located 1,826 m up in mist-shrouded mountains. It must be one of the most scenic launch sites in the world. Nearby are rice paddies and grazing buffalo. To the north lie mountains and giant panda reserves and to the south lie lakes. The skies fill from time to time with migrating birds. The launch site is near Xi Chang city and 270 km from Chengdu by rail and road. Xi Chang is on the old south-western Silk Road which started at Chengdu and headed through Xi Chang into Burma (250 km distant) and India. The average temperature is a pleasant 17°C, with 320 days of sunshine a year. The only problem time is mid-summer, when there is often heavy rain and, at worst, the danger of flooding.

To reach Xi Chang launch site by land, one follows the Kunming-Chengdu railway northward along the valley floor of the Anning River until a single branch line turns west into the launch site valley. Visitors arriving there drive along roads cluttered by bicycles, water buffalo, and farm workers carrying chicken and vegetables to market. One then passes a communication center, technical center, and command and control center. To the right of the railway is the first launch pad, used for the Long March 3, served by a large 900-tonne 77-m-tall gantry which has 11 work levels and a crane. A cement flame trench was constructed to take away the flames of the rocket on take-off. An air-conditioned clean room on the top floor protects satellites from dust and humidity. The pad may not appear to have been used since the CZ-3’s last flight in 2000. To the left of the railway, 1,000 m away, is a second launch pad, constructed subsequently for the Long March 2E, ЗА, and 3B. It was built in the course of 14 months and first used for the CZ-2E Badr/Kuafu launch in 1990. This second pad has a huge 4,580-tonne service tower, 97 m tall, with 17 work levels. Just 80 min before launch, the tower moves back to a distance of 130 m. A third pad was completed in 2006 and first used on the Beidou launch of 13th April 2007. Observation platforms with seats for 2,500 places were constructed on the nearby hillsides, with tourists invited to pay ¥800 to watch launches.

Also to the left of the railway line lie buildings for storing launchers, the various stages, and payloads, though they are finally assembled vertically on the pad by crane. The launch towers are protected by 100-m-high lightning rods. Around the gantries are fuelling lines – one set to keep the liquid-hydrogen third stage topped up; a second to provide helium which pressurizes the fuel tanks; another for storable fuels. Liquid hydrogen is topped up in the third stage until just 3 min before lift-off.

Launches out of Xi Chang take a curving trajectory to the south-east, flying over southern Taiwan, the PhiUppines, and towards the equator. The ascent is tracked from either side by ground stations from Yibin and Guiyang, Nanning. Satellites are still just over China when they reach the edge of space.

The countdown is carried out in a blockhouse close to the pad, but the overall operation and the subsequent flight are monitored from the launch control center 6,000 m from the launch pad in a deep gully. The launch control center comprises a large gymnasium-sized room with walls of consoles and a large 4 x 5.3-m visual display at the front. There is an observation room, able to take 500 people at a time. Laser theodolites, set in domes, track rockets as they ascend to orbit.

In more detail, the launch pad and control center. Courtesy: Mark Wade.

A launch campaign in Xi Chang takes 40 days. The rocket is first delivered by rail into a transit hall measuring 30.5 x 14 m, before being brought into a much larger assembly room of 91.5 x 27.5 m. Payloads are checked out in a clean room measuring 42 x 18 m called the non-hazardous operations building where temperatures and humidity are kept within tight limits. The stages and payloads are then transferred to the hazardous operations and fuelling building where fuelled sohd-rocket stages and satellites are installed. Final checks take place in a last checkout and preparation building. The site also has an x-ray facility to check any equipment against cracks. The rocket stages are trolleyed to the pad, one by one, before being assembled vertically.

This appeared to end the series. The long-promised seeds satellite, flown as Shi Jian 8 and launched from Jiuquan on 9th September 2006, is, for convenience, reviewed here (the rest of the Shi Jian series is reported in Chapter 7). Although it has a different designator, we know that it was an FSW cabin and it was many times referred to by the Chinese as the “23rd recoverable mission” and as an FSW 3 series mission. The orbit was similar to other Jian Bing 4s, with a perigee of 178 km and apogee of 449 km. A day into the mission, it was reported that the seeds and fungi
were already sprouting: high-definition cameras sent back pictures of their growth every two hours to Xian mission control for forwarding on to the Shanghai Institute for Biological Science. The recoverable satellite came down after 15 days on the morning of 24th September, while the orbital module stayed aloft for another three days. It is also possible that it was the last film-based photo-reconnaissance mission. Shi Jian 8 was brought for examination to the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, where its seeds, vegetables, plans, fruits, grains, and cotton were handed over to the Institute for Plant Physiology and the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences.

An important breakthrough in Shi Jian 8 was live and recorded video broadcasting of experiments under way. Shi Jian 8 had a volume of 0.9 m3, 0.45 m3 in the recovered cabin, and an overall payload of 600 kg including a down payload of 250 kg. There were 215 kg of vegetables, fruit, grains, seeds, and cotton on board of 2,000 types, 152 species, 202 accessions, 80 groups, and 9 plant types. Shi Jian 8 carried experiments on the mutation of seeds, cell cultivation, mass transfer, granular media, surface deformation, boiling water, fire resistance, higher plants, smoldering, and a spring accelerometer. The satellite had a 256-GB memory, transmitting daily downlink on S-band at 8 MB a day in 25-min passes. Most FSW experiments were designed to be operated automatically, using a pre-programmed timer, but some were commanded on by telemetry. Whereas the seeds experiments were located in the recoverable module, the materials processing experiments appear to have been located in the orbital module. The orbital module experiments are listed in Table 4.1.

Looking at the experiments in more detail, Shi Jian 8 carried a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, a system of light beams to measure the behavior of water droplets in a protein solution in zero gravity, named after Ludwig Mach (son of Ernst, who invented the Mach number) and Ludwig Zehnder. An exotic experiment undertaken with French scientists studied the behavior of granular gas balls [13]. Shi Jian 8 continued the heating and boiling experiments first tried on FSW 22, this time using a plate heater. Water droplets were immersed in protein solutions. An experiment in granular matter was carried out to test, using video, the Maxwell demon effect (an experiment developed by James Clerk Maxwell to test the laws of thermodynamics).

An important experiment carried out tests on one of the great dangers of spaceflight: fire. In 1967, the Apollo 1 astronauts had died when a smoldering wire caused a fire, which, in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, rapidly consumed the cabin.

Table 4.1. Shi Jian 8 orbital module experiments.

Smoldering and combustion in microgravity Fire transmission by wires in microgravity Heat transfer in microgravity Granular media in microgravity Mass transfer in microgravity Development of mice embryos in microgravity Effects of microgravity on Chinese cabbage

Smoldering fires were subsequently detected on five shuttle missions (STS-6, 28, 35, 40, and 50). Here, an experiment found that the heat-loss factors that normally dissipate smoldering on the Earth were much reduced in weightlessness, making such pre-fires potentially far more dangerous. Electric wiring was much more likely to overheat and catch fire than on the ground. It was found that, in a 21% oxygen environment, smoldering flame on polyurethane foam did not progress but, at 35%, oxygen turned to flame and spread fast [14].

Four Kunming white mice early-stage cell embryos were carried on the non­recoverable module: they were photographed every three hours for 72 hr and it was found that the embryos failed to develop normally (none got beyond eight cells), unlike an identical ground control set. Scientists came to the conclusion that microgravity had a lethal effect on embryos at an early stage. Also in the orbital module was a garden of eight Chinese cabbages, the aim being to follow the growth cycle from germination through to pollination. The garden had lamps to illuminate the plants and cameras took pictures every 2 hr. Although leaf shapes were unaffected by weightlessness, there were fewer leaves and they grew shorter, more slowly, and wilted before the petals had even fully extended [15].

At the time of this mission, it was announced that it would be followed by Shi Jian 10 for a 28-day mission in microgravity and life sciences – a mission originally scheduled for 2010 but which slipped. The aim is to carry 20 experiments in microgravity fluid physics, microgravity combustion, space materials science, fundamental space physics, space biotechnology, and to study the biological effect of gravity and radiation. The materials processing experiments would focus on crystal growth from melt, under-cooling, crystal growth solutions, nucleation, and the solidification of alloys. While awaiting the next mission, China’s following cargo flew on a Russian satellite, Foton М3, in September 2007, using its Polizon-M furnace to test new materials for Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors (DMS). The experiment involved creating a rotating magnetic field around a heated, growing crystal [16].

CBERS is the most high-profile international collaborative program developed by China. It is very much the achievement of one person: Renato Archer (1922-96), a naval officer and expert in nuclear energy who became a social democrat member of parhament during the 1960s and was then jailed by the military government. Many years later, he became Minister for Science and Technology, with responsibility for the Brazilian space agency, INPE. At a pohtical level, he believed in the importance of Brazil’s pursuing a foreign policy independently of Europe and the United States,

so, in December 1984, a Brazilian delegation was sent to Beijing to explore cooperation in space applications. Renato Archer himself traveled there in July 1986 to meet with the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). Brazil had an active space program (sounding rockets, leading to its first satellite in 1993) and indeed had put efforts into trying to develop its own launcher (though with little success). Three areas of cooperation were explored: Earth resources, communications, and launchers. Chinese technicians visited Brazil in February 1987, where they presented the idea of a collaborative Earth resources program based on Zi Yuan and this was formally agreed on 6th July 1988 at a ceremony signed in Beijing by Brazilian President Jose Sarney.

The project was developed on a 70:30 China:Brazil basis, the total cost of the project being budgeted at between €330m and €345m. The project was called China Brazil Earth Resources Satellite and involved the building of two satellites, one in China, the second in Brazil. The first launch was scheduled for 1992, but suffered five years of delays, due mainly to political upheavals (Tiananmen, 1989, as well as domestic pohtics in Brazil). There were practical difficulties, too. The agreed working language was English, because most young Brazilian scientists had studied in American or European universities or institutes, but the much older Chinese scientists spoke only Chinese or Russian. CAST’s technical documentation was only in Chinese but, to develop an English text, “the Chinese secretaries did not know the English alphabet, so when they tried to work with it, just typing a few lines took hours” [11]. Happily, they found a Taiwanese-born Chinese and Portuguese­speaking geographer, Sherry Chou Chen, to bridge the gap.

CBERS weighed 1,450 kg and was a box 1.8 x 2 x 2.2 m, with one solar panel 2.6 m tall and 6.3 m long, able to generate 1.1 kW of power, while hydrazine powered the maneuvering jets. It was designed to cross the equator at 10:30 am every day, so as to set a standard point of reference for Sun angles on the targets observed, with a revisit pattern of 26 days. It was China’s first digital imaging satellite, overtaking the old “wet film” recoverable technology of the FSW series. CBERS was designed to enter an orbit of 774 km, 78.5°, similar to that of the Feng Yun 1, and provide detailed images of the Earth in five channels using Unear CCD cameras with a resolution of 20 m, able to tilt up to 32° to either side for oblique shots, swath 110 km, comparable to the French SPOT 4. CBERS was built to carry a multispectral infrared scanner (IRMSS) (resolution 20 m, swath 120 km) and a wide-field imager (WFI) (resolution 258 m, swath 890 km). The WFI was Brazilian – built, but the other components were made in China. The intention was to cover the country in narrow, medium, and wide resolution simultaneously. A data-collection system could pick up and retransmit information from unmanned inland stations and buoys.

CBERS was set for launch in September 1998 but, that July, the Chinese presciently announced that, due to incoming unfavorable weather, it would be delayed for a year. The first CBERS was eventually cleared for launch from Taiyuan on 26th September 1999 and its fuel tanks filled over the following three days. On the 30th, it was attached to its fairing. Nothing happened for the next two days, as launch workers had time off to observe the national holiday to mark the revolution

50 years earlier. Final integration took place over the 3rd to the 11th, after which the CZ-4B rocket itself was fuelled up. On 14th October, 400 technicians from both countries saw the launch and the rocket pitch over southward only 20 sec into its mission, heading over towards Laos. Twenty-two minutes and 40 sec after launch, CBERS 1 was ejected from the now bumed-out third stage and, 25 sec later, released a Brazilian subsatellite, SAC-1, or Scientific Applications Satellite 1. The successful deployment of both was soon confirmed by a ground tracking station at Nanning. By way of an endnote, the fuels left in the Long March 4B upper stage combusted accidentally on 11th March 2000, blowing the stage apart, scattering 300 fragments in orbit and spewing out a dust cloud of tiny fuel particles. Ironically, the Chinese had become increasingly aware of the problem of orbital debris and the Long March 4 was the first Chinese rocket fitted with a system of venting residual propellants to prevent this very situation from arising, obviously without much success.

Seven hours later, CBERS was over Brazil and picked up by the main tracking station at Sao Jose dos Campos. In China, CBERS was tracked by stations in Beijing, Guanzhou, and Urumqi as well as the main mission control center in Xian which was responsible for on-orbit checkout. Data were sent down to the additional ground stations in Cuiaba and Alcantara. The initial orbit of CBERS 1 was 728­745 km, inclination 98.55° (polar), and period 99.6 min. Six days later, the satellite began to use its motor to gradually raise its orbit, in order to reach a perfect Sun – synchronous operating altitude. Over a month, in the course of 13 maneuvers, it

pushed its altitude to a circular orbit at 774 km, period 100.32 min, which it reached on 9th November, which enabled it to circle the Earth 14 times a day and revisit the same track over the ground every 26 days. CBERS carried out small but regular maneuvers to raise its orbit: whenever it fell to 100.315 min, the motor would fire briefly to lift it back up to 100.322 min. The wide-field instrument was reported to have failed after 177 days because of a short circuit.

A mission report four months later recorded that data were being collected for agriculture, forestry, water quality, urban planning, and environmental protection. Among the first commercial users of CBERS data were cellulose manufacturers (for information on eucalyptus trees) and government agencies trying to prevent slash-and – bum farming practices in the Brazilian jungle. In October 2001, the Space Mechanical and Electrical Research Institute in Beijing held a seminar to mark the first two years of the mission. CBERS 1 had sent back more than 200,000 images, of which 3,000 had been customized into publicly available CCD images. They had picked up anything from coal mine fires in Ningxia to landslides along the Yigong River in Bomi, Tibet. Its images were used by 1,200 operators in China and 3,000 in Brazil.

After four years, CBERS raised its orbit to 773-782 km, which became its retirement orbit. CBERS 1 operated for double its two-year planned lifetime, sending back over 8,000 images of China, covering 99% of the country. CBERS 1 retired in August 2003 but NASA reported that, on 18th February 2007, there was an accidental explosion of remaining propellant, which created another 60 pieces of debris [12].

It was soon replaced by the 1,550-kg CBERS 2, built in Brazil and put into orbit by China on 21st October 2003. CBERS 2 carried the first Chuangxin (“creation”) micro-satellite, China’s smallest satellite to that point at only 88 kg (see below). CBERS 2 was technically similar to CBERS 1, with a high-resolution camera, wide – field camera, and multispectral camera, but there were improvements: downlink data volume was doubled and the revisit time shortened from 26 days to 13 days. The instruments were developed by the Beijing Institute of Space Mechanics and Engineering, all able to send images in real time. The multispectral CCD camera weighed 198 kg, had a focal length of 1.01 m, a spatial resolution of 5 m (10 m from the operating altitude of 778 km), and a side-look capability of 32°. The multi­spectral scanner weighed 135 kg, and had a focal length of 1.4 m and a resolution of 40 m. The light high-resolution CCD camera weighed 73 kg and had a focal length of 3.3 m. CBERS 2 concentrated on observing deforestation, land changes, natural disasters, pollution, and underground resources. CBERS 2 operated initially from 731-750 km and eventually raised its orbit to the same as CBERS 1. Its service Ufe took it to at least 2009.

Within a year, CBERS 2 was generating 2,100 images a week and had 15,000 individual users in 8,000 institutes and organizations. In its first three years, CBERS 2 built an image bank of over 150,000 pictures. The total number of CCD scenes distributed by May 2006 was 210,000, each CD having 145 MB. Users comprised private bodies and farms (51%), educational organizations (26%), and government bodies (23%). Typically, the CBERS catalog is downloaded 650 times a day.

After a further four-year gap, CBERS 2B flew on the CZ-4B from Taiyuan on 19th September 2007 into an orbit of 736-741 km. It weighed 1,452 kg and was designed to send data on land use, agricultural production, and environmental protection. On 21st September, it climbed to its operational altitude of 773 km. CBERS 2B continued the high-resolution CCD camera and wide-field imager, but the IRMSS medium-resolution camera was replaced by a new high-resolution camera of 2.5-m resolution in the visible spectrum with a swath of 27 km and was able to swivel 4°. To improve pointing accuracy, the satelhte carried both satellite navigation (Global Positioning System (GPS)) and a star sensor. Within a year,

320.0 of its images had been downloaded from the internet worldwide. CBERS 2B ceased operations in April 2010 and Brazil put China under pressure to bring forward CBERS 3.

CBERS 3 is due by 2013, CBERS 4A by 2015, and 4B by 2017, with Brazil putting €230m into the program. CBERS 3 weighs 1,980 kg, can generate 2.3 kW of power, and is to be accompanied by a 500-kg observation mini-satellite, Amazonia. The number of cameras will be increased from three to five:

• a four-band panchromatic camera taking images of 5 and 10-m resolution, with a swath of 60 km and a swivel ability of 32°;

• a multispectral camera, 20-m resolution, with a swath of 120 km;

• an infrared multispectral camera taking images at 40 and 80-m resolution in four bands, with a swath of 120 km, all built in China;

• a four-band advanced WFI, resolution 73 m from 890 km, built in Brazil;

• a 20-m CCD camera, resolution 20 m, swath 120 km, also built in Brazil.

Overall, 50% will be made in Brazil, compared to 30% for CBERS 1-2. The satellites will have a design lifetime of three years. Transmission rates will treble from 100 mbps to 300 mbps. They will be followed by CBERS 5 and 6 with 1-m resolution to follow by 2020 and, later, CBERS 7 will be a Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite.

The CBERS series have had important results and outcomes for Brazil. In 1998, the Brazilian space agency, INPE, organized a team to prepare the dissemination and application of CBERS data. Regular workshops and “CBERS weeks” were held to discuss the results and outcomes. Applicants registered on INPE’s CBERS site, identified the ground area in which they were interested, and were then able to choose the images they wished to download. CBERS was able to provide a new agricultural map on a scale of 1:250,000 and the country is now covered in 172 new maps. Coloring could identify what crops were ready for harvesting or which had already been taken in: soy showed up as red before, but green afterward. A new vegetation map was made by the University of Vigosa. Land-ownership maps were developed, showing national parks and identifying individual private owners (to check against tax enforcement). Oil spills off the coast were detected.

One of the most important applications was in the area of deforestation, for the CBERS Wide Field Imager was able to image new areas of deforestation, trails, burning, and logging, especially when compared to earlier Landsat and SPOT photographs. On the east coast, only 7% of Atlantic forest remained. The first Landsat run in 1977 found a deforestation rate of 2.5%, the second run 7.5% in 1988, but CBERS data found a national deforestation rate of 18%, with

250.0 km2 being lost per year. Maps were handed over to law-enforcement agencies.

CBERS has been given high visibility by both countries and is considered by both to be a high point in their international scientific collaboration. This was symbolized

when, in 2004, President Hu Jintao visited the national space research institute in Sao Paolo and planted a bellflower tree there. At one stage, China proposed that Malaysia join the CBERS program and have its own receiving station, but this does not appear to have been pursued. In a similar initiative, Venezuela signed a €100m agreement with China in 2011 for a 500-kg CAST2000 Earth observation satellite, VNRSS, for launch on Long March 4B and an order for a Turkish military reconnaissance satellite, Goturk, due to fly in 2012, presumably based on the same technology. The series is summarized in Table 6.4.

Space science has not been a prominent aspect of the Chinese space program. The substituting of scientific instruments originally intended for the first Chinese satellite by a tape recorder playing “The East Is Red” was an indicator of things to come. The number of purely scientific satellites launched by China is small: Shi Jian 1, 2, 4, and 5, with some scientific instruments and experiments carried out on other spacecraft (e. g. the early communications satellites, Feng Yun). The Tianwen Weixing was canceled in 1984. Despite a lengthy campaign by the astronomical and astrophysics community, other scientific projects like the solar telescope and the x – ray telescope have had long gestation periods and, despite conception in the 1990s, have still to fly 20 years later. Clearly, science has found it difficult to fight its comer, even in a financial environment more stable than that of Russia, where space science suffered badly in the years of economic difficulty. The Tan Ce missions did give China a substantial scientific return, as well as international recognition, and may have provided the encouragement necessary to renew old and develop new missions, like the SST, the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope, Kuafu, and MIT. As we will see later, the government came to recognize the importance of rectifying the historic underinvestment in space science and set down fresh plans for more ambitious missions in space science (see Chapter 10). Some of these gaps were later made good by the use of the orbital module of the Shenzhou manned program to carry scientific packages – a role reviewed in the course of Chapter 8, as well as by the start of the lunar program in the early twenty-first century (Chapter 9).

China now sketched out a sequence for its subsequent lunar missions, the main spokesperson being program director Ye Peijian. Although the dates appeared to move around, the fundamental sequence did not, namely two rovers (Chang e 3 in 2013, Chang e 4 later) and then 2-m core sample return missions (Chang e 5 in 2017, Chang e 6 later). Chang e 3 was expected to double the size of the previous missions and weigh up to 3,750 kg, requiring a CZ-3B launcher. The objectives of the mission were listed as to survey the topography and geological structure of the Moon, to analyze the content and the distribution of its mineral and chemical elements, to explore the Earth’s plasma layer from the Moon, and to carry out optical astronomy observations from the Moon. The mission profile was for it to first enter a 100-km circular orbit, adjusted to 100-15 km for the descent maneuver. At the 15-km point, retrorockets would bring the craft down from a velocity of 1.7 km/sec to dead stop at an altitude of 2 km. Smaller throttleable engines would then bring the craft down to 100 m as its radar searched for a debris-clear crater-free landing area, the engine being commanded off at 4 m for a final free fall, with crushable material in its landing legs.

Chang e 3 was expected to deploy a small rover with a plutonium 238 nuclear power source to keep it warm for the lunar nights. The six-wheel rover would investigate the material and geological composition of the surface for a minimum of 90 days. Considerable effort was devoted to hazard avoidance during landing: the landing radar would be loaded with terrain features identified by Chang e 2’s reference data, which the incoming spacecraft would match against its own radar and steer the lander to the right, flat point. At an early stage, landing, radar, and hazard-avoidance tests were carried out in the eastern Xinjiang desert, selected as the best Earthly analogue to the Moon for testing out lunar rovers and other equipment to function on the Moon.

Models of the mother craft and rover were exhibited at the Zhuhai air show in 2009. The lander had a descent camera to image the surface during the landing, a

topographic camera to photograph the landscape and the rover moving across it, an extreme ultraviolet camera, and an astronomical telescope to focus on a number of astrophysical objects to magnitude +15. The rover had a panoramic camera, x-ray spectrometer, infrared spectrometer, and radar [14].

Chang e 4 was expected to be a follow-up rover mission, much as Chang e 2 had followed Chang e 1, but at the south pole. In the meantime, work began on the sample return mission, Chang e 5. Studies began of the best return route for samples, even sketching out a return path on a given date (1st July 2016) and the navigation systems for take-off from the lunar surface while work started on the drill that would bring a core sample back to the Earth, much as Luna 24 had done as far back as 1976 [15]. The schedule projected was:

Chemical map of the landing area for the Chang e 3 rover. Courtesy: Chen Shengbo.

Altitude <m)

1000

:

Magnetic map, identifying anomalies to be explored using the Chang e 3 rover. Courtesy: Chen Shengbo.

When China’s manned spaceflight program was approved in 1992 (see Chapter 8), it was always made clear that its objective was to bring crews up to an orbiting space station. There, they could observe the Earth’s surface and atmosphere below and the heavens above, overcome the medical and related problems of long-duration spaceflight necessary for later flights to the planets, as well as carry out scientific and engineering experiments. Tiangong was only a step towards a permanent space station. The Chinese chose to follow the step-by-step approach of the first country to build an orbiting station: the Soviet Union. The Russians had built the first orbiting station, Salyut, able to take one crew at a time (in 1971). Later, they built a semi­permanent station where crews could stay for lengthy periods and be supplied (Salyut 6) and then a station designed to be occupied throughout its life (Mir). Although Tiangong was about half the size of Salyut, the idea was similar.

China had hoped to join the ISS project. The international station was the outcome of an agreement between the Russian and American governments in 1992 to merge the proposed American Freedom space station and the Russian Mir 2. The other partners of the United States on the Freedom project – Europe, Canada, and Japan – duly joined the ISS. After numerous delays, the first components of the ISS were eventually put into orbit in 1998 in what became the biggest international engineering project in history. China made several pitches to join the ISS project, dropping heavy hints to visiting journalists and officials of other space programs, especially the Europeans. ISS was not a true international project without them, they argued. They pointed out that their Shenzhou manned spacecraft could easily dock with the ISS – all they needed was an invitation. The United States Congress, though, gave China an uncompromising brush-off. The polite reason was the need for China to sign non-proliferation agreements, but some congressmen made inflammatory remarks about not having Chinese spies running around our space station. China briefly flirted with the idea of leasing the Russian Mir station, by then at the end of its eventful life. Ultimately, China was left with no option but to build its own station. China’s space program, which dated back to 1956, before even the first Sputnik, had largely been developed indigenously, so such a challenge was nothing new. Even despite this, China never abandoned its desire to have some participation in the ISS. Chinese officials attended the launch of the European cargo ship Edoardo Amaldi to the ISS in March 2012 (they were barred from launches in Cape Canaveral) and discussed – at least with the Europeans – the possibility of a Shenzhou at some stage docking there.

Even if shunned by the United States, there were no obstacles to China’s doing business with Russia. In March 2000, work on space stations was added as a theme to the cooperation agreement between Russia and China. Russia agreed to provide technical assistance and advice (two cosmonauts were assigned to the task), build a limited number of components, provide training for ground controllers, and transfer 36 specific areas of space station technology.

China had published its first short-term space station design, what we now know as Tiangong, back in the mid-1990s, the Mandarin word meaning “heavenly palace”.

Formal government approval was given in February 1999 and the first critical design review took place in May that year. The first model was built in February 2003 and, with the words “space laboratory” on its side, spotted at the hydrotank in the training center. Pictures of a full-scale prototype were published in 2005. It was based on the Shenzhou service module, with two rotatable solar panels, a scheduled lifetime of up to two years, and it was about half the size of Russia’s Salyut station. Film was presented on Chinese television in 2008 of Tiangong under assembly in a white room, with a backup craft being built in the background. The model was brought to Jiuquan launch center for a 50-day pad test from 12th March to 27th April 2010. The real version was completed in August 2010 [2].

The finished version was in the shape of a cylinder of two halves, one slightly wider than the other, with a docking port on the large end and beside it a rendezvous antenna. The larger cylinder had two portholes (one for visual observations, the other fitted with a camera) and a radiator for thermal control, while the smaller cyhnder had a dish antenna for communications with the Tian Lian communications satellite, solar panels, and an orbital maneuvering engine. Small attitude-control thrusters were located at a number of points. The interior color scheme was divided

into two: a darker one for the floor and a lighter one for the ceiling. It was equipped with an exercise machine and two personal cubicles. An experimental urine-recycling device was installed for testing by the astronauts for when they arrived. On board the module was space food that would not perish for 250 days. The docking system, called Sky 1, had a ring-like capture structure based on the system developed by Russia for its Soyuz spacecraft in the 1970s. The dimensions of Tiangong were as follows: length 10.4 m; diameter 3.35 m at the largest part of the cylinder; weight 8.5 tonnes; and volume 15 cm3. Chief designer was Zhang Shancong. A set of scientific instruments was agreed for the station in 2009 and these were added over the following months.

The new laboratory required some changes to the rocket required for the mission, the Long March 2F – no fewer than 38 major modifications and 132 minor ones. The principal of these was a larger launch shroud, but an escape tower would no longer be necessary. Its new designator was the 2FG but others were seen, such as 2F2, FT1, and 2FY8. Its lift-off weight was 497 tonnes, making it the heaviest rocket to fly from Jiuquan.

Everything was on course to begin the space station program in summer 2011. Tiangong arrived at Jiuquan launch center on 30th June 2011. Less than two weeks later, on 11th July, a Tian Lian relay satellite was orbited from China’s second launch center, Xi Chang in the south of the country in Sichuan. Tiangong could now communicate with ground control by beaming signals outward to 24-hr orbit, which, between two Tian Lians, guaranteed coverage throughout its orbit.

Then there was a setback. On 18th August, another version of the Long March rocket, the 2C version, failed when putting an unmanned satellite, Shi Jian 11-2, into orbit. The failure took place at a late stage in the ascent – there was no dramatic explosion – and Shi Jian fell out of the sky far downrange. It was the first failure of a Chinese satellite to get into orbit since 1996 and an unwelcome intervention in a program that had a fanatical commitment to quality control. The launching of Tiangong was put on hold so that the upper stage could be re-checked. Thankfully, the cause was quickly apparent: a connection between the servo-mechanism and second-stage vernier engine §3 had broken, causing the rocket to shut down before it reached orbit.

Eventually, Tiangong was moved to the pad on 20th September. A full ground simulation countdown was carried out on the 25th. This cleared the way for fuel to be loaded on the 28th – an operation carried out by engineers with gas masks to protect them from the toxic fuels used on the CZ-2F. Although nitric acid fuels had the advantage that they could be kept at room temperature (they did not need to be frozen) and could sit in a rocket for some time before being launched, any fumes that escaped could quickly overwhelm the rocket troops loading them. The launch was set for 13:16 UT – but that was in the middle of the night in Jiuquan. There was a 15-min launch window.

As darkness fell, Tiangong counted down smoothly on the evening of 29th September, watched by almost the entire Chinese political leadership which had traveled to Jiuquan for the occasion. Black and orange smoke billowed out from underneath the Long March rocket as, right on time, it lifted quite slowly into the

darkness, the orange a telltale sign of the nitric fuels. A tail of yellowy-orange flame spread behind as it bent over in its climb to the north-east, heading towards the China Sea and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Booster rockets fell away, followed by the first stage, and then the second stage began burning. There was no repeat of the mishap a month earlier and, eight minutes into the flight, the second stage shut down so as to spring Tiangong free on its own. Tiangong entered its orbit of 198-332 km, 42°, and, within minutes, had deployed its solar panels so that its electrical systems hummed into life. As it came over the Pacific, its signals were picked up by one of the three Yuan Wang tracking ships ( Yuan Wang 2, 5, and 6 had been on station for several weeks) rolling in the seas down below.

Controllers on the ships quickly knew that Tiangong was in the right orbit and commanded its first task: to fire its engine to adjust the orbit path to be circular at 343 km, where it would await the arrival of an unmanned spacecraft. This was done in two stages: on 30th September, Tiangong adjusted its path to 336-353 km and then made the circular orbit at 343 km. Later, they would command it up to 370 km, let the orbit gradually drop for orbital linkups at 343 km, and then bring it back up again.

While awaiting its first link-up, there was much for Tiangong to do. Newspaper reports highlighted the fact that the space station carried 300 flags from the International Astronautical Federation but, for a more serious purpose, Tiangong carried a number of scientific packages. There was a gamma ray telescope to test solar activity and detect x-ray bursts that could give clues to the structure of the cosmos, its origin, and evolution. There was an imaging spectrometer to take pictures of the Earth, track pollutants, and measure gases in the atmosphere, with a 3-D microwave altimeter to measure the height of water in the oceans and inland seas. On the outside was an exposure platform to test how glass, optical instruments, and metal alloys endured the harsh environment of Earth orbit. Inside the station were high-precision atomic clocks to test theories of gravity and a boiler to test microgravity fluid physics, material formation, and mechanics. Table 1.1 lists the scientific objectives of the orbital station.

Table 1.1. Tiangong scientific objectives, experiments, and activities.

Closed life-support systems to test ecologically sustainable systems Microgravity fluid physics, material formation, and mechanics

External exposure platform to test optical electronics and materials tests (e. g. metal alloys) High-precision atomic clocks to test theories of gravity

Polarized gamma ray telescope (gamma bursts, solar flares) to test solar activity, cosmic structure, origin and evolution of universe

Observe magnetosphere-ionosphere-atmosphere environment to develop prediction model Push broom imaging spectrometer, hyperspectrum image spectrometer for Earth observations 3-D imaging microwave altimeter for land and sea

Detect, investigate global atmospheric trace gases, atmospheric environment

Source: Gu, Yidong: Utilization of China Manned Space Engineering, International Astronautical Congress, Glasgow, Scotland, 2009.

Tiangong was tracked by eight stations abroad as it circled the Earth: Swakopmund, Malindi, Karachi, Santiago, Alcantara, Aussaguel, Kerguelen, and Dongara. Dongara, called the “rock lobster capital of Australia”, is 350 km up the coast northward of Perth. The use of Dongara first became known when it appeared on wallcharts in the mission control center in Beijing. This was a Swedish-built and owned station made available to China. Australians had hitherto been quite unaware of their country’s important contribution to the Chinese space station program, though they would have been had they subscribed to the Swedish space agency’s magazine, where this arrangement had been announced. Australia already had a long history of space tracking, with a big station at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, and the famous Parkes radio telescope which relayed the pictures of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the lunar surface, leading to the engaging film, The Dish. The use of Dongara meant that a Yuan Wang tracking ship hitherto stationed off Western Australia could move elsewhere and thereby extend tracking cover.

Probably the least well-known of China’s launch sites, Taiyuan launch center is set in gently rolling hills in Kelan county south-west of Beijing, 1,500 m above sea level, near the coal town of Taiyuan. It began with a single pad for rocket launches with an 11-floor platform 76.9 m tall. The first launch from there was a Dong Feng missile in 1968, followed by further missile tests. It was not brought into the space program for 20 years, when it was used for the first launch of the Feng Yun weather satellite on the CZ-4A. It is the home of the Long March 4, but has also been used for some CZ – 2 missions. Taiyuan is used for application satellite launches, often into polar orbit, starting with the Feng Yun weather satellites and followed by Earth resources satellites, Yaogan military observation missions (Chapter 6), and a miscellany of other missions, such as Tan Ce (Chapter 7). The best weather for launches is between May and September. A second pad was brought into operation with the launch of Shi Jian 6-03A and 6-03B on 25th October 2008.

As can be seen, specific results were made available on Shi Jian 8. Results from the earlier 22 missions were associated not always with individual missions, but with groups of missions, and the individual satellites flown were often not identified. Nevertheless, the Chinese made a significant effort to present program outcomes collectively, so they are reviewed here.

The first scientific results of the series were reported from 1987, with the first of six materials processing flights [17]. Rice seeds brought back to the Earth crossed with Earthly grains produced high yield rates, some giving 53% more protein. Space-grown yeast offered higher and faster fermentation rates, opening up new prospects for a space beer industry. Algae flourished in orbit. Altogether, 300 varieties of seeds and 51 kinds of plants were carried in seven different biology packages. Once back from space, seeds from the plants grown on board – rice, carrot, wheat, green pepper, tomato, cucumber, maize, and soya bean – were planted out by the Institute of Genetics, further note being taken of succeeding generations over the following years. Space-exposed rice were set on a field of 667 ha, a substantial terrain, to test their yields. The results varied. Some strains of rice improved from their space experience, while others did not. Some grains grew faster and were fatter, heavier, and sturdier. Wheat experiments produced new strains that had short stems and grew fast. One strain of green pepper, called the Weixing 87-2, demonstrated a 108% increased yield, 38% less vulnerability to disease, and a 25% improved vitamin C content, bearing fruit long after terrestrial peppers had lost their leaves. Bumper 400-g green peppers were bred – twice as much as normal ground size. A fifth-generation space tomato had a yield 85% higher than its terrestrial rivals and doubled its resistance to disease. Space-grown cucumbers demonstrated a surprising ability to withstand greenhouse mildew and wilt. Female cucumber flowers were observed to flourish in the space environment. Asparagus seeds flown in space also thrived on the Earth. Overall, these outcomes matched similar results from Russian space biology experiments in which some plants thrived, others wilted, and many grew into strange shapes.

The missions of the 1990s produced more results. Exposure to weightlessness created a genetic variation in seeds which meant that the replanted seeds doubled their weight and grew taller fruit with a higher resistance to disease, a higher proportion of vitamin C, and a longer shelf life. In 1998, following these experiments, a Space Vegetable Foundation was established in Anning by the Academy of Sciences, where it further developed and sold “space fruit” to the open market. By 2002, space vegetable gardens had been established in Hebei, Gansu, and Sichuan, and 12 varieties of wheat, rice, tomato, peppers, and cucumber were grown. The space-developed cucumbers were especially successful, growing 20% longer than the purely Earthbound variety, and had a strong disease resistance (as well as tasting better, according to the experts). This was a big program, for, by the time of Shi Jian 8, space-bred seeds had been planted on 560,000 ha of farmland, producing 340 tonnes worth €50m.

Results from the Earth observations carried out on FSW missions were sparse until outcomes of the FSW 2-3 were reported in 1996. A real problem here is that no published photographs were ever attributed to FSW and images of the ground published in the Chinese media during the period of the program appeared to come from Western satellites. This may have reflected either limited distribution channels or, more Ukely, a desire not to reveal the resolution of the cameras when their principal purpose was military. Nevertheless, China claimed substantial benefits from the photography work of the FSWs. A new map of China was commissioned in 1949, but only 64% of it had been finished by 1982: 600 FSW pictures were able to finish the job in a matter of months. The total number of islands off the Chinese coast was recalculated at 5,000, instead of 3,300. The country’s farmland was recalculated at 125.3m ha rather than 104.6m ha. The FSW satelhtes had compiled detailed Earth resource maps of Beijing and its eastern environs, Tianjin and Tangshan. Oil deposits were discovered in Tarim, chromium and iron deposits in Inner Mongolia, and coal elsewhere. The FSW satellites discovered remnants of the Yuan dynasty’s ancient city of Yingchang: they even uncovered buildings erected in 1270 by the first Yuan emperor, Kublai Khan, for his daughter, Princess Luguo Dachang. Images tracked the path of the Great Wall across northern China and found the old walls of the Chengde summer palace. FSW satellites were used to prepare geological survey maps, identify the optimum routes for railway lines, and track the patterns of silting in the Huang (Yellow), Luan, and Hai Rivers. They tracked water and air pollution, observed soil erosion, and identified geological fault lines. The FSW satellites located goldfields in Mongolia, and oil and natural gas in the Yellow River delta and offshore.

Data from the FSW and Feng Yun series, combined with information from the American Landsat and the French SPOT satellites, provided a worrying picture of desertification in Qinghai in the north-west. Dynamic changes were taking place, according to the satellite data: dunes had advanced, grassland was damaged, and water resources had been misused. Elsewhere, soil erosion had been noted. Positively, the rate of afforestation had been assessed and was seen to be growing.

The use of windbreak forests in northern China had already regenerated the ecology of the area. Earth resources satellites carefully tracked the evolution, speed, and impact of the Yellow River: as a result, timely warnings about floods were given before the inundations in 1991, minimizing damage. Satellite tracking of the 1987 forest fires in Xinanlang enabled firefighters to save up to 10% of the forests from further damage. By 2000, China reported, as accomplishments of the FSW series, the mapping of the sand deposited to sea by the Yellow River (Huang He), the finding of seven mineral deposits for the Capital Iron & Steel Co., four new oilfields in Xinjiang, the completion of a general territorial survey, 80 material science experiments, and improved tomato yields of 20% with 40% reduction in disease.

A progress report was issued on the outcomes of the FSW materials processing and biology missions, such as the results of experiments from gallium arsenide superconductors. Eighteen different materials were used to develop crystals in orbit, the dominant ones being gallium and lithium. These experiments, developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Hebei Semiconductor Research Institute, found that electronic devices made from crystals in space outperformed those developed on the Earth. Space-manufactured crystals were more sensitive, carried more current, and were less prone to voltage noise or likely to suffer leakage. Tests on alloys, tellurium, and gallium arsenide yielded positive results, crystals having high purity. Space-grown gallium arsenide crystals were better and were the basis for making quality superconductor lasers.

To test the value of algae in closed-cycle systems, 17 types of algae and zooplankton were carried into orbit in a 759-cm3 incubator, some surviving well but others succumbing. Building on experiments on the Soviet Salyut orbital stations, cell cultures were brought into orbit, principally leukemia T-cells and carcinogenic

samples from human lungs, finding that their growth slowed considerably due to the combination of zero gravity and the radiation environment [18].

Eight years after the start of Zi Yuan, China introduced a new, more specialized program of Earth resources satellites, focused on the environment and disaster­warning. Called “Huanjing” in Chinese, meaning “environment”, two were launched together from Taiyuan on 7th September 2008 into a high-inchnation, Sun-synchronous orbit. The program was geared to the 74-nation intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO), 2005, led by China and the United States under the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters, 2000, intended to coordinate the supply of images to disaster-struck regions. China stated that one of its purposes was to follow land-use development, especially illegal land use by profiteers.

These were small satellites, both 475 kg and based on the standard design or bus called CAST968 (China Academy of Space Technology, 1996, “8” for the month or design number). The theory behind the “bus” idea was to develop a standardized design which could be adapted for a variety of missions, standardization lowering the cost of production. They carried four cameras: two CCD imagers of 30-m resolution and a swath of 700 km; an ultraviolet camera of 100-m resolution and a swath of 50 km; a super-spectral imager (A only); and an infrared camera of 150-m resolution and a swath of 750 km (B only). The satelhtes had a revisit orbit of four days, a crossing time of 10:30 each day, and a service life of three to five years. They were aimed at circular orbits of 649 km at 98°, similar to the Yaogan (below), but lower than the maritime observation satellite, Haiyang, at 798 km (below). Data transmission rates were 120 МВ/sec (A) and 60 МВ/sec (B). Data were sent to the China Resource Satellite Application Centre, completed in 2008, which also handled CBERS.

First images were received on 9th September 2008 and the satellites were declared operational on 20th March 2009. Within a year, 510,000 images had been provided for the Ministry of Environmental Protection and a further 70,000 for other registered users. In the area of disaster relief, the satellites provided imaging that was used for two great snows (Tibet and the north), earthquakes (e. g. Wenchuan), forest fires (Australia), a mud slide (Chongqing Wulong), river flood (river Huai, Yellow River), and frozen seas (e. g. Bohai). The photographs were especially useful in identifying transport routes whereby rehef can be provided. The Huanjings also followed algal blooms, water sediment levels in rivers, risks of water contamination, sand storms, air pollution, straw-burning, and oil spills, both for environmental protection and subsequent law enforcement. Earthquake images from satellites were able to pick out collapsed buildings (red) and intact ones (green). They played an important role in mapping landslides, glacial lakes, and the Bohai Sea ice disaster of winter 2009-10. Both satelhtes were used by CEODE to give assistance to Australia during the bush fires in Victoria, Australia, in February 2009, being repositioned to fly over the disaster areas twice a day. The Huanjings beamed down 130 GB of data over the following three weeks in optical and infrared, following the intensity and direction of the fire fronts, both to assist the fire fighters and to enable residential communities to be evacuated in time. The Huanjing program has been well documented, certainly in comparison to Zi Yuan [13].

They will be followed by Huanjing 2, which will carry a microwave radiometer, microwave scatterometer, and radar altimeter. Before them, the radar will be tested by Huanjing 1C, which was first exhibited at the Zhuhai air show in 2009. Huanjing 1C is a larger 890-kg radar satellite, with 5-m resolution and a swath of 400 km, able to make four-day revisits. Ultimately, according to the Academy of Sciences’ long-term plan for space development, Roadmap 2050, China’s objective is to build data on climate changes across up to 20 parameters (e. g. methane, ice and

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Straw-burning detected by Huanjing. Courtesy: COSPAR China.

Map of earthquake zone, collapsed buildings, taken from Huanjing. Courtesy: COSPAR China.

snow coverage, aerosols, nitrogen oxides, land use, cloud and precipitation, forestry) so as to construct a reference model of climate systems and climate change. This will be fed by next-generation three-dimensional microwave sensing technology to measure the oceans, salinity, rain, vegetation, and the main features of land masses. The data will be stored in what is called the Digital Earth Scientific Platform, which comprises:

• a central node, called the Dawn supercomputer;

• three network nodes (Miyun (Chinese landmass), Kashi (western Asia), and Sanya (South China sea to Mekong);

• ground stations in Xian, Changchun, Shanghai, Sanya, Kunming, Lhasa, Kashi, and Urumqi;

• overseas stations in Brazil and the Zhongshan base at the South Pole;

• 18 sub-nodes, the intention being to update data through the system daily.

The series is summarized in Table 6.5.

Table 6.5. Huanjing series.

Huanjing 1A 7 Sep 2008

Huanjing IB

CZ-2C from Taiyuan.