Category China in Space

This was the last mission for some time. Rumors circulated in the late 1990s of a new version to come, the FSW 3 series, but this was complicated when China then announced its intention of flying a dedicated orbital mission to test improved varieties of grass, shrubs, and trees, which observers called the “seeds mission” for short. Wang Yusheng of CAST explained how the exposure of grasses to radiation could be used to develop different types of grasses – those that could spread quickly, or grow more slowly, or be capable of resisting harsh climatic conditions. Then, China announced plans to fly a silkworm experiment, contrived by Jingshan High School, Beijing, to follow the entire lifetime cycle of the silkworm from egg to adult in the course of a mission. The original aim was to compare the results with a similar experiment carried out on the last, lost flight of the American Columbia Space Shuttle. Silkworm experiments had been carried on 10 previous FSWs and Bions. Scientists found that, although weightlessness reduced the hatching rate, silkworms otherwise grew normally, produced better silk, and had better digestive ability than ground silkworms.

Already, some seeds experiments had been funded under what was called “project 863”, a project that was to subsequently reappear in other parts of the space program. Project 863, really a program rather than a project, was authorized in March 1986, hence the “3” and “86” designators. It was a horizontal program for scientific modernization in China, in turn a response to the Star Wars program announced by President Reagan in March 1983. Star Wars provoked a strong response in the Chinese engineering and scientific community, but the lesson the Chinese took from it was not that they should re-arm, but that they had fallen far behind the West in technology – a gap that must be closed once more. In 1986, space scientist Yang Yiachi and three colleagues wrote a letter to Deng Xiaoping later published in the Journal of the Chinese Academy of Science proposing a systematic approach to technological modernization. He accordingly directed the state council to respond. Gathering together 200 experts for four months, they produced An Outline for a National High Technology Planning, proposing a budget of ¥10m. The government agreed what was called the National High Technology Development Program, or project 863 for short, but not the budget, which it increased by three magnitudes to YlObn. It was a horizontal program with seven categories (biotechnology and life sciences, information, aerospace, laser technology, automa­tion, energy, and new materials), 15 themes, and 230 sub-categories (the European Union uses a similar model, called the Framework Program (FP) for research). Between 1986 and 2001, €780m was invested in the program in 5,200 individual projects. The idea was to fund small cutting-edge projects (e. g. digital mapping, internet libraries in Chinese) that could be applied across wide areas of the economy – indeed, it led to 2,000 new patents in the first 15 years. The program contributed to Chinese advances in a number of areas, such as computers, where China developed the fastest computer in the word, the Tianhe 1, able to carry out 2,507 trillion operations a second (2.507 petaFLOPS). Project 863 funded a series of studies, exploratory projects, and missions in the space program, seeds being one of the first. Responsible for space research in project 863 was Min Guirong (1933- ), an engineer involved in the design of both the first satellites and the subsequent FSW series.

After a seven-year gap, the FSW series resumed in November 2003 as FSW 3-1 (the title Jian Bing 4 was also given for the FSW 3 series). Its weight was 3,800 kg and it was launched by the Long March 2D from the pad adjacent to the one where, two weeks earlier, Yang Liwei had made history as China’s first astronaut. The cabin returned to the Earth with its payload on 21st November after 18 days of circling the

Earth. In charge of the FSW program at this stage was Tang Bochang. The next mission, FSW 3-2, flew for 27 days starting on 29th August 2004, the mission being for surveying and mapping, confirmed by its lower perigee of 165 km. This was actually an older version of the cabin and used the CZ-2C, not the more recent D, so it could also be categorized as the FSW 1-6. The equipment module, 2,500 kg, remained in orbit but, by early October, it was tumbling and fell out of orbit on 6th November.

Soon after its return, China launched FSW 3-3 on 27th September 2004 on the CZ-2D from Jiuquan for geological surveying and area mapping. It maneuvered to an unparalleled height in the series: 560 km. FSW 3-3 carried 57-kg experiments for boiling heat transfer, air bubbles, melt mass, and cell cultivation. The mission lasted 17 days, the cabin crashing into a villager’s home beside the market in Tianbeizi, Sichuan. The roof was wrecked and supporting pillars were brought to the ground, but the cabin itself was undamaged. At this stage, the Chinese used two additional designators for the FSW series, both Jian Bing 4 and its number in the overall program (the 20th recoverable satellite, FSW 20). The next mission followed on 2nd August 2005 on the CZ-2C from Jiuquan. Named FSW 3-4 or FSW 21, it returned after 27 days on 28th August, while the equipment module orbited until 16th October. It was most likely a close-look photographic mission [10].

Only nine hours after it came to rest, FSW 3-5 (also FSW 22) was launched on Long March 2D from Jiuquan into orbit of 203-298 km, 63°, 89.5 min. This meant that Xian control was preparing the new mission at the very time it was recovering its predecessor – an impressive demonstration of control abilities. Western observers

interpreted the back-to-back mission as part of a military reconnaissance program to obtain six weeks of continuous coverage of high-value targets under favorable lighting conditions [11]. This at last carried the long-announced “silkworm mission” of Beijing Junghan Middle School to follow the spinning and cocooning of the silkworm in orbit. The students found that orbiting silkworms had a shorter lifespan (eight days) than on the Earth (10 days), in line with earlier results. FSW 3-5 carried a fluid physics experiments to study the migration of injected single and double air bubbles in silicon oil. Platinum wires were used to boil liquids to test the efficiency of heat transfer. Although heating was not affected by microgravity, the pattern of bubbles was dramatically different, producing many continually forming tiny

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FSW experiment container. Courtesy: COSPAR China.

bubbles, the large ones staying on the surface. Three distinct types of bubbles were observed, some very small but coalescing into larger ones, enabhng a model of bubble development to be formulated differently from that on the Earth. Air bubbles injected into silicone oil tested the Marangoni theory that they would move into warmer water (they did). Liquids boiled more gently than on the ground and it was more difficult to know precisely when boiling takes place. In another biology experiment, bacterial cells were fed with glucose and hormones to test their consumption rates compared to ground samples [12]. The equipment module orbited until 16th October.

The first Earth observation satellite was America’s Landsat in 1972, followed by similar missions from Europe, Japan, and Russia. An indigenous domestic system was not approved by the Chinese until the mid-1980s and was given the name Zi Yuan (the Chinese word for “resources”). China had to build its Earth resources program from the very beginning. From the early 1970s, China had bought in Landsat data and used it to re-map the country by 1980 on a scale of 1:2,000,000, generating 738 sub-maps, and also bought two Citation light aircraft for instrument tests. China made extensive use of JERS, PROBA, the Space Shuttle, NOAA satellites, and, in particular, Europe’s Earth Resources Satellite (ERS) for rice mapping, land use mapping, following floods, oceanography, seismic activity, the atmosphere, climate, landslides, and forests [7]. With French SPOT data, China established a national medium-resolution (10-30-m) imaging database of 21 ТВ (terrabytes), one updated every five years, to be the basis for land management and ecological assessment. Some features were singled out for more detailed attention, such as forest shelter belts, the Three Gorges dam, the south-to-north water diversion project, and the Tibet plateau, as well as areas of high urban atmospheric pollution. China’s national reports to COSPAR suggest that, until Zi Yuan, they were quite dependent on Western satellite imaging. It would seem that the circulation within China of Fanhui Shi Weixing (FSW) images taken from 1975 (Chapter 4) must have been limited.

The Chinese chose to develop Zi Yuan in collaboration with Brazil as CBERS and this reached orbit first, in October 1999 (see next section), followed by the purely domestic version a year later, on 1st September 2000, put into polar orbit by a Long March 4B. Chief designer of the Zi Yuan was Ye Peijian, born in 1945, educated in Switzerland (1980-85), fluent in French and English, and awarded prizes for the Zi Yuan because it was the first long-life, real-time Earth observation satellite with high data rate transmissions and high-resolution Charge Couple Device (CCD) cameras. Ye later went on to the Chang e lunar program.

Ever watchful Western observers noticed that Zi Yuan’s orbit was a full 40% lower than CBERS 1, at 468-493 km. By 10th September, Zi Yuan had used its engine three times to raise its perigee to 484 km and, between then and the end of October, fired a further three times to maintain an almost circular orbit of 488­496 km – still far lower than CBERS. Zi Yuan continued to trim its orbit every 9-47 days. Whenever the orbit dipped to 94.41 min, a small burst from the engine would send it back to 94.45 min. Its orbit was never quite circular, there being about 10 km between apogee and perigee. This pattern continued into 2002. It was со-planar but in a slightly different inclination from CBERS, both in Sun-synchronous orbits. By October 2001, Zi Yuan had made 21 orbital trims to keep its altitude at a steady 490­495 km, normally within a kilometer each side. It repeated the same orbital path in patterns of 13, 17, 21, 25, and 29 days. It eventually retired in December 2004. So, although Zi Yuan was similar to CBERS, its behavior was different, being in a lower orbit with regular path-keeping maneuvers while CBERS performed no maneuvers after reaching altitude [8]. Zi Yuan came at a time when the pre-digital FSW missions were drawing to a conclusion.

The Republic of China on the island of Taiwan alleged that Zi Yuan was flying the same cameras as CBERS 1 but at a much lower altitude in order to gather images for the military. The Chinese denied this and insisted that Zi Yuan was gathering civilian Earth resources information and played down the slightly different orbit. Evaluation of the nature of the Republic of China’s claims was inconclusive. We know that the ground resolution of CBERS 1 was 20 m so that, for Zi Yuan, at a lower altitude, its resolution was likely to be about 12 m, which was much poorer than could be obtained from the FSW satellites and well below the standards necessary for quality photoreconnaissance. Despite this, rumors of a military association persisted and Zi Yuan was connected by the Washington Times newspaper to a Chinese plan for an electro-optical reconnaissance program called Jian Bing 3, pictures of 5-m resolution (possibly 2-m) being sent back digitally (later, Jian Bing as a designator was confirmed). The Washington Times suggested that, whatever the situation regarding spying on the Republic of China, Zi Yuan was eyeing American forces in Japan and the rest of the Pacific. Zi Yuan imaging does

not appear to have been published until Zi Yuan 3 in 2012, adding to such suspicions.

This Zi Yuan was joined by a companion in a similar orbit on 27th October 2002 and the set became known as Zi Yuan 2A and 2B, respectively. By 12th November 2002, Zi Yuan 2B had maneuvered into an orbit of 475-504 km while Zi Yuan 2A continued in a similar orbit of 488-492 km, retiring in August 2006. Each covered the same ground path every five days so, between them, they could cover any ground location every two and a half days. According to Chinese space officials, the two craft were operating in tandem 120° apart. The third Zi Yuan, 2C, was launched on

Long March 4B from Taiyuan on 6th November 2004, entering orbit 12 min later and swiftly acquired by Xian mission control. Zi Yuan 2C’s orbit was originally around 480 km, similar to the others, but, in June 2008, it was raised to 520-533 km, in September 2008 to 530-590 km, and then in November to 550-610 km. This ended the series for the time being and it is possible that its role was taken over by the Yaogan series (below) [9]. There was a footnote, for there was a final launching in 2011 in the form of Zi Yuan 1-02C, this strange designator being explained away as being a leftover Chinese-built satellite from the original CBERS system constructed with Brazil. It entered a 773-774 km orbit some 13 min after leaving its Taiyuan launch site, then covered in thin snow. It carried two high-resolution cameras and one panchromatic multispectral camera for Earth imaging, being declared operational on 29th February.

The third Zi Yuan series, approved in 2008, was inaugurated as the world’s first launch in 2012. Zi Yuan 3 was a 2,650-kg high-resolution civilian stereo three­dimensional cartographic satellite put into a Sun-synchronous 498-506 km orbit, 97°, on a five-year mission to map the country’s western regions, providing information that would be used for water conservation and energy and transport planning. Xian control center reported its successful separation 12 min after launch and signals were quickly received at the Miyun tracking station of the Centre for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE) and later that day from stations in Kashi and Sanya. Its use was transferred that summer to the National Administration for Surveying, Mapping and Geo Information and hailed as a significant advance in China’s Earth observational capacity. Transmission rates to the ground marked a radical step forward, 56.6 GB in just 10 min, using a dual – polarized system. Zi Yuan 3’s images were posted just four days later, the first covering an area of 210,000 km2, and were linked to a Chinese Digital Earth project (tianditu. cn). Zi Yuan 3 also carried a small 28-kg satellite for Luxembourg, the LuxSpace Sari microsatellite called Vesselsat to assist Orbcomm’s automated maritime vessel tracking system, made by Deltatec in Liege. Vesselsat 1, a twin, had already been launched by an Indian rocket the previous October.

One of the purposes of Zi Yuan 3 appeared to be to replace foreign commercial sources for imaging China, for the launch announcement referred to the importance of China’s obtaining indigenous access to high-resolution geographical information. Even as Zi Yuan was phased in, China continued to reply on data from other countries, principally Europe, formalized in the Dragon program at a meeting of European and Chinese scientists in Xiamen in April 2004, compli­mented by an agreement signed at European Space Agency (ESA) headquarters in Paris the following year. Dragon gave China access to Envisat optical and radar data with the aim of improving cultivation of rice, forest mapping (a seventh of China), aquifers, floods, air quality, and desertification. Envisat was especially important for rice-monitoring, because China did not then have an operational radar system able to see through clouds and, in addition, Envisat’s SCIAMACHY instrument was able to measure the output of methane, a greenhouse gas, from rice fields. Similarly, Envisat’s radar was able to measure flooding in all weathers and by night. SCIAMACHY could also measure nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants

in the air while the MERIS instrument could measure red tides out from the Yangtze River.

As part of Dragon, Chinese forestry students studied at the ESRIN facility in Frascati, Italy. Sixteen projects were operated jointly by ESA and the National Remote Sensing Centre of China. The Dragon program ran to 2007, the outcomes being discussed at a symposium in Beijing in April 2008. Chinese scientists showed how they had used Envisat data for a broad range of interpretive analyses of the oceans, atmosphere, flooding, water resources, drought, flood plain mapping, forestry, agriculture (e. g. rice), terrain measurement (e. g. landslides), air quality, and even the impact of the Olympic Games on the urban environment. The program was extended as Dragon 2 (2008-12), covering wetlands, sea ice, forest fires, water quality, river deltas, coastal zones, the carbon dioxide budget, ecosystems, and topography. Dragon 2 included advanced training courses in fields such as land, ocean, and atmospheric remote sensing, with defined study areas, 400 scientists, 25 dedicated projects, and a young scientist program. Chinese contributions to the program came from the Haiyang oceanographic satellites, Huanjing land observa­tion satellites, CBERS, and Beijing 1 disaster monitoring satellite [10]. The Dragon 3 program was announced in summer 2012, with 50 projects, 700 scientists, and more advanced training courses. The Dragon program indicated a critical gap in Chinese know-how – one that China worked hard to close with European assistance. The series is reviewed in Table 6.3.

The idea of a dedicated astronomical observatory has long been close to the heart of Chinese astronomers and astrophysics, with the United States and Soviet Union first launching such observatories in the 1960s. China has sketched four such missions – Tianwen Weixing, Solar Space Telescope (SST), Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), Kuafu – and made plans for participation in the World Space Observatory.

The first was brought to the design stage in the 1970s and even acquired a name, the Tianwen Weixing, though this project was not identified until many years later by Italian space writer Paolo Ulivi. Work on the 500-kg spacecraft began in 1976 and it was slated to carry astronomical instruments developed by the Purple Mountain Observatory. The purpose of the mission was to observe cosmic rays, x-rays, gamma – ray bursts, and high-energy solar emissions. It would make an all-sky survey through a window of 80 cm2. Instruments were a soft-x-ray imaging telescope, solar H-lyman ionization chamber, solar soft x-ray proportional counter (2-20 KeV), solar ultraviolet detector, solar radiation receiver, 10-cm2 cosmic x-ray source detector, cosmic gamma-ray burst detector, and cosmic gamma-ray burst x-ray detector. The soft x-ray imaging telescope proved exceptionally difficult, delaying the project. Even though the spacecraft was completed and integrated, the mission was canceled in 1985. Its instruments were transferred to other missions: the solar soft x-ray detectors (1-8 A), high-energy proton detector (10-30 MeV), and high-energy electron detector ((0.5-1 MeV) to the first communications satelhtes; the solar and cosmic ion detector to the Feng Yun in 1990; some instruments to Shenzhou 2 (Chapter 8); and others to balloons which made long-distance flights to Japan and over Siberia [11].

China returned to the idea of an astronomical observatory five years later. The Academy of Sciences approved in 1992 a 2-tonne solar observatory called the SST in cooperation with Germany (the proportions being 80:20) but this also made slow progress. By 1997, it had been through a full design study, with five volumes of papers completed. First government funding came in 1999 for the manufacturing of the telescope and attitude control systems, for test facilities in the observatory of Beijing, and for the mirror to be made in Russia. In its final design, the telescope itself would weigh 2 tonnes, carry five instruments, and operate for up to five years at 800-km altitude, carrying a polarizing spectrograph, accompanied by four side – mounted telescopes to examine the Sun in wide-band, X-ray, and hydrogen rays, as follows:

• 1-m main optical telescope, 3,900-6,600 A;

• 12-cm extreme ultraviolet imaging telescope in four spectrum lines;

• 12-cm white-light telescope, 6,562 A;

• wide-band spectrometer with soft and hard x-ray spectrometers and gamma – ray spectrometer to observe solar flares; and

• solar and interplanetary radio spectrometer, 2-50 MHz.

The SST would focus on the solar magnetic field and the detailed structures of the active areas. The intention was that it would be launched from Taiyuan on a Long March 4B for a three-year mission in a circular orbit at 730 km, 99.3 min, 98.3°. The truss for the telescope was 340 kg in weight and the structure holding the telescope 4 m long. The telescope’s observations would be transmitted down to the ground station in Miyun and then relayed 60 km to Beijing by fiber-optic cable. The telescope would collect 1,728 MB a day, which, after compression, will be downloaded in a daily 8-GB x-band transmission. It would have a two-dimensional real-time spectrograph to measure vector magnetic fields on the solar surface with a resolution of 0.1 arc-seconds so as “to achieve a breakthrough in solar physics” [12]. The latest launch date given is 2015.

A second project with long historical roots was the HXMT. This progressed through a number of design stages, too. The idea of an x-ray telescope was first defined in 1994 when two scientists in the High Energy Astrophysics Laboratory and Beijing Observatory, both called Li, proposed the use of 18 hexagonal prisms to

make an x-ray sky survey in the 10-200-KeV range, below the range sampled by the European-Russian INTEGRAL project. Detailed design work was undertaken in the mid-1990s. The principal instrument was to be an 18-sided hexagonal prism for both survey purposes and more detailed imaging of high-interest objects [13].

This was refined in the 11th five-year plan (2008-13), whereby HXMT would operate in a wider energy band of 1-250 keV, with a resolution of 1 arc minute. Its objectives were to go beyond the hard x-ray sky survey, to find out how many supermassive black holes were surrounded by dust, make observations of x-ray emissions from pulsars, and examine the gravitational fields of compact objects and black holes. In 2009, a model was exhibited at the Zhuhai air show and the project was given a 2012 launch date with a budget of ¥lbn (€110m). It was announced that it would carry four telescopes, weigh 1 tonne, and orbit at 500 km for four years.

Funding for HXMT was not finally forthcoming until March 2011, with a new launch date set for 2015. Now it would carry both a low-energy instrument (1­15 keV) and a medium-energy one (5-30 keV). The 2,700-kg satellite will be put into an orbit of 550 km, 43°, for a four-year mission with the following final configuration of instruments:

• high-energy x-ray instrument, 20-250 keV;

• medium-energy x-ray experiment, 5-30 keV; and

• low-energy x-ray experiment, 1-15 keV.

As before, HXMT will perform sky surveys of the galactic plane, but its objectives were made more precise: to monitor variables and detect fresh sources; make large observations of the cosmic x-ray background; obtain the x-ray spectra of active galactic nuclei in order to determine their components and geometry; and observe the timing, physics, and extreme physical conditions near x-ray binaries.

The fourth was Kuafu, named after a figure in Chinese mythology who traveled to the Sun and followed a similarly named earlier mission with Shi Jian 4. This also dated to the 1980s and made no progress until Professor Tu Chuanyi formally proposed on 24th January 2003 that it be merged with a conceptual study for a Solar Wind and Auroral Storm Explorer (SWASE). International partners were invited to a presentation in Frankfurt, Germany, in December 2004 and it quickly attracted support in Germany, France, Britain, Belgium, Canada, Austria, and Ireland, with others joining later (Finland, Italy, Norway, and Switzerland). One hundred and five participants attended a Kuafu symposium in palm-tree-Uned Sanya, China, in 2007. Later, it became part of the International Living with a Star (ILWS) program and also found its way into the national 11th five-year plan (2008-13).

Kuafu is a development of Tan Ce, but this time with three spacecraft on a 10- year mission. The aim of the mission is to follow the complete chain of disturbance from the solar atmosphere to geospace, with a particular interest in solar flares, Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), interplanetary clouds, shock waves, magnetic storms, sub-storms, and auroras. According to Rainer Schwenn of the Max Plank Institute, “despite the enormous progress in recent years, there is still a lack in understanding of several key links in the long chain of actions and reactions that connect our Earth to its parent star, especially the origin of disturbances at the Sun, like flares and CMEs and our inability to predict them; their effects on the Earth;

Table 7.6. Kuafu instruments.

Kuafu A

Extreme ultraviolent disk imager Coronal dynamics imager Radio burst instrument Solar wind instrument package Solar energetic particle sensor X-ray detector

Kuafu В

Extreme ultraviolet aurora monitoring camera

Aurora spectrograph

Wide-field aurora imager

Fluxgate magnetometer

High-energy particle experiment

Neutral atom imager (Ireland)

their ability to enter the Earth’s system and the magnitude of their terrestrial effects”. It is anticipated that each spacecraft will be 700 kg and fly 670,000 km from the Earth at three distinct points, the launcher being a CZ-3B (single launch) or CZ-2 (double launch). A will be located at Lagrange point LI, 1.5m km inward from the Sun, while B1 and B2 are put into terrestrial polar orbit, north and south, respectively, thereby giving simultaneous observations of solar storms and auroras at the peak of the next solar maximum.

Kuafu A will carry instruments for measuring solar extreme ultraviolet, white – light CMEs, the local plasma and magnetic field, solar wind as well as radio waves, while B1 and B2 would study high-energy particles and the magnetic field, and make 24-hr continuous imaging of the auroral regions. Instruments cover the 20- 300-MeV range, while the magnetic field measurer has a resolution of 0.01 nT. The payload for Kuafu A is 89 kg with a data transmission rate of 160 kbps, while for В the payload is 60 kg and the data rate is 500 kbps [14]. Table 7.6 describes the payloads.

An abortive project was SMESE (Small Explorer for Solar Eruptions), aimed to study solar flares and CMEs and the connections between the two at solar maximum. Even though a mission design had been completed, France pulled out of the project in April 2009. Instrumentation had even been agreed (Lyman disk imager, EUV disk imager, infrared telescope, Lyman alpha coronagraph, x-ray spectrometer, and gamma-ray spectrometer).

Finally, China indicated its willingness to participate in the World Space Observatory Ultraviolet (WSO-UV), a joint Russian-European-Chinese project with a 1.7-m primary mirror to study the structure of the universe and the atmospheres of distant planets, with China offering to contribute a long slit spectrograph. Participation will require advances in instrumentation, especially in focusing telescopes, focus plane detectors, sub-millimeter wave detectors, infrared detectors, and cooling systems. This project is still at an early stage of definition.

Originally, Chang e was to be followed several years later by a rover and eventually a sample return mission, the follow-on missions being approved by the government in October 2008. The next year, though, it was announced that a second orbiter would take more detailed pictures to assist the subsequent rover and sample return missions, and study the Moon’s chemical composition. To improve communications, it would carry an x-band antenna able to transmit high-speed data at a faster rate with smaller equipment. To conclude the mission, it would either be crashed into the Moon, return to a high orbit in the Earth-Moon system, or be moved to solar orbit.

Chang e 2 was duly launched on the evening (18:59) of National Day, 1st October 2010, using the new Long March 3C rocket out of Xi Chang. Unlike its predecessor, the more powerful rocket enabled a direct ascent, so it reached the Moon five days later, entering a 12-hr lunar orbit on 5th October. It had the tightest possible launch window, at one second, to launch at that particular moment. Two maneuvers were needed to achieve the 100-km operational orbit of 118 min: its first orbits were at an altitude of 119-8,599 km, 3.5 hr, and then the circular orbit was achieved on 9th October. It was claimed that the 50-kg engine achieved an accuracy in thrust of 1 cm/sec. Within two weeks, Chang e 2 had made the first of two dives over the lunar surface, down to 15 km on 27th October for close-look photography. This followed the type of diving maneuvers of the Soviet

Union in its lunar photography pro­gram (Luna 22).

The first images were published on 11th November – a mixture of broad view and close-ups. The first analyses were published the following spring. The most interesting were pictures of the crater Daniell in the Lacus Somniorum taken on 23rd October 2011, which, compared to American LRO images, found fresh evidence of crater wall collapses, avalanches inside the 17-20° slopes of the crater walls, debris streams up to 4 km long, and fresh soil exposed. Chang e 2 carried a new gamma-ray spectrometer made by the Purple Moun­tain Observatory with three times better performance than its predecessors, which, within 24 hr of arrival in lunar orbit, had detected potassium thorium, magnesium, silicon, aluminum, oxygen, titanium, and calcium [12].

On 23rd May 2011, Chang e 2 made its second dive, swooping to only 15 km
over the Sinus Iridum, the Bay of Rainbows, to take high-resolution images of the planned landing site for the Chang e 3 rover and also of the two poles. Sinus Iridium is a bay surrounded by high mountains and promontories in the north-west corner of the Moon, is flat (slope of 2°), has many interesting features such as high iron content and age (over 4 eons), and is covered in parts by volcanic ejecta, multilevel terraces, and magnetic anomalies. Chang e found an average regolith thickness of 3 m, but up to 15 m where the bay rises in terraces and slopes in the surrounding areas. It is a negative gravity anomaly, the adjacent mare (Imbrium) being positive. In comparison to the mare, Iridum has a thinner regolith, and higher iron but lower titanium content. Chinese scientists published a map of four distinct districts of the Sinus Iridum according to their chemical composition, impacts, and flooding of the original Iridum crater, with a history dating back from 2.62bn to 4.06bn years. A temperature map of the bay was compiled (for the record, it ranges from 253 to 300 К daytime). Cheng Shengbo of the College of Geoexploration of Jilin University in Chanchun, who analyzed the Sinus, believes that it is representative of key periods of lunar evolution and a rich site to sample [13].

With its main tasks accomplished, in June 2011, mission controllers decided to move the spacecraft to the L2 point. The L points were named after Joseph Louis Lagrange, who defined a series of points in the configuration of the Sun-Earth – Moon relationship where orbits were comparatively stable, the L2 point being 1,5m km further out than the Earth when the three bodies are in a Sun-Earth-Moon configuration, one providing some protection from solar radiation. According to mission director Wu Weiren, the purpose was to test the tracking network further out than ever before, observe the solar wind, and pave the way for unmanned missions to Mars. Chang e 2 was in excellent condition and considered in good shape for such an extended mission. It was not the first spacecraft positioned there, for it had been preceded by the American Microwave Anistropy Probe. On 10th June, Chang e 2 fired its engine to leave lunar orbit on an 85-day journey to L2, where it arrived on 25th August after 77 days. This took place in two stages, the first being a lunar orbit of 5 hr 3 min before a second bum to kick it out of lunar orbit. It was the furthest distance any Chinese spacecraft had ever reached from the Earth; 600 kg of leftover fuel were required for the maneuver. In June 2012, China announced its intention to move Chang e 2 a second time, on this occasion to intercept an asteroid at a distance of 1,000 km in 2013.

Chang e 2’s lunar map was published the following February, showing both sides of the Moon to a detail of 7 m. It was based on 746 images with a digital volume of 800 GB. Once again, the mission combined a high level of technical expertise with a substantial scientific outcome. The series is summarized in Table 9.2.

Table 9.2. Chang e series.

Both from Xi Chang.

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.