Category China in Space

China’s second satellite followed Dong Fang Hong into orbit nearly a year later, using the Long March 1 on its second and final flight. Now that the propaganda value of launching a first satellite had been demonstrated, China’s second satellite could concentrate on scientific tasks. In effect, this second satellite achieved what the first one had been intended to do had political and propaganda imperatives not risen to the fore during the early design stage. Chief designer was Yang Yiachi (1919— 2006), who spent the years 1947-55 studying in and acquiring qualifications from Harvard, Pennsylvania University, and the Rockefeller Institute.

The tasks of the second satellite were agreed at a conference held in the Chinese Academy for Space Technology in Beijing in May 1970. The second satellite received a new designation, Shi Jian (meaning “practice” in Chinese). Slightly heavier at 221 kg, Shi Jian eventually entered orbit on the evening of 3rd March 1971. The mission got off to a problematic start, for, although the explosive bolts separating the satelhte from the third stage fired, the satellite did not separate from its carrier rocket. Enveloped within the third stage, the signals transmitted were weak – only about 1 % of what had been hoped for. The designers were, as one might imagine, perplexed and worried. On the eighth day, the signals suddenly came through loud and clear. Ground observations confirmed that the satellite had now separated from the launcher. Beijing did not announce the launch until 16th March, presumably when separation had been confirmed and stronger signals had been received.

Shi Jian was, like its predecessor, a 72-side polyhedron, but covered in solar cells which charged a long-Ufe two-watt nickel-cadmium battery. In place of the anthem­playing tape recorder, Shi Jian carried three scientific instruments – an 11-mm cosmic ray detector, a 3-mm x-ray detector (1-8 A), and a magnetometer. A hundred automatic thermal shutters closed as the spacecraft entered darkness, opening again as it entered Ught (a similar system was carried by Sputnik 3). Using four short-wave antennae, the radio transmitter emitted a stream of scientific data on 16 channels which could be picked up 3,000 km away. The instruments recorded solar x-ray electrons over 0.88 MeV and protons over 16.9 MeV, while the magnetometer made the first Chinese mapping of the Earth’s magnetic field. Shi Jian continued to transmit scientific data until it burned up in the upper atmosphere on 17th June 1979. The battery and telemetry systems showed no evidence of deterioration and maintained the same high level of performance throughout the mission, despite 10,000 charging and recharging cycles (one for each orbit as the satelhte went into and came out of darkness). The design teams rightly received commendations for these achievements in 1978. The 3,028-day mission appears to have been completely successful. The satellite enabled geophysicists to publish a reference Handbook of the Artificial Satellite Environment.

Shi Jian was very much the achievement of Professor Zhao Jiuzhang, the pioneer of Chinese space science and the founder of the Institute of Applied Physics, which became the Institute of Space Physics [4]. Despite his importance, he is hardly known outside China. Zhao Jiuzhang was bom on 15th October 1907, in Kaifeng, Henan. First, he went to study electrical engineering at Zhejiang Industrial School, now University, in Hangzhou, going on to graduate in physics at Tsinghua University in 1933 and, like most of his colleagues, he went abroad for further study, going to the most scientifically advanced country in Europe – Germany, where he was awarded his doctorate in dynamic meteorology in Berlin in 1938. He returned to China in 1949, where he became director of the Institute of Geophysics immediately after the revolution. He became an expert in the atmosphere, air masses, trade winds, solar energy, charged particles, and magnetic fields. His main achievement was to ensure an early scientific orientation for the space program and set a benchmark for the future. He died on 26th October 1968. Much later, his contribution became ever more appreciated. In 1989, an award for “young and middle-aged scientists” was established in his honor, with 79 scientists winning this much-coveted award in the subsequent 20 years. An asteroid, §7811, was named after him, a COSPAR prize was established to commemorate him in 2006 in the fields of space and atmospheric physics, and the Academy of Sciences held a meeting to commemorate his centenary on 29th October 2009.

Our knowledge of the sounding rocket program in China is fragmentary and incomplete. When the satellite project was canceled in 1958, engineers set to work on the modest but nonetheless challenging objective of building a sounding rocket (Chapter 2). Directed by Wang Xiji, they made two successful launches with the T – 7M in February and September 1960, reaching 8-km altitude. Later saw the development of meteorological sounding rockets called the He Ping (“peace”) series, a two-stage solid-fuel rocket. He Ping 2 was 6.645 m tall, weighed 331 kg, and was able to reach 72 km. Its first flight took place in 1967, serial production began the

following year, and 49 He Ping 2s were launched from 1970 to 1973. The He Ping 6 series began to fly from Jiuquan in 1971, with a final round of nine launches as high as 90 km in 1979. The third series of sounding rockets was called Zhinui (Weaver Girl), beginning in 1988 from Haikou, Hainan. The Zhinui came in two series: the 1 and the 3. The Weaver Girl 3 rocket was 4.87 m tall, weighed 285 kg, has a payload of 45 kg, and can reach 147 km. By 1997, there had been 22 launches [6].

Sounding rockets resumed in 2008 with the launch of a sounding rocket in connection with the Meridian space weather monitoring project. A second launching was reported on 9th May 2011, the rocket identified as the solid-fuel Tianying 3C, also part of the Meridian program, designed to measure the micro-constituents of the atmosphere, electric fields, ion density, and electron temperatures up to 200 km. Its performance was reported as an altitude of 220 km with an experimental package of 50 kg. According to the program for the future development of Chinese space science, Roadmap 2050 (Chapter 10), China had done far too little work with sounding rockets since the 1980s and was now lagging in such critical areas as payload mass, data processing, and the ability to develop serial production.

A January 2000 launch of a domestic communications satellite appeared to be routine. The launching on the Long March ЗА went smoothly enough, but further difficulties came up with the satellite’s name. Some reports called it Zhongxing 22 (or Chinastar 22). However, the “22” came from the location or slot allocated for satellites in 24-hr orbit (98°E, in the event): it was clearly not the 22nd satellite in this or any other series. Eventually, the 2.3-tonne comsat, almost certainly using the DFH 3 design, acquired the name Feng Huo 1, “fire and smoke” in Chinese, named after an ancient system of communicating using beacons along the Great Wall. Whenever invaders threatened ancient China, beacons had been lit all along the wall – a much faster method of warning than horseback. Built by the China Space Technology Institute, Feng Huo appeared to be a test of mobile frequencies for the Chinese military. American intelligence experts went further and said Feng Huo was part of a new command-and-control network, providing targeting capability for ballistic, cruise, ship, and aircraft-borne missiles. Both the United States and Russia used dedicated military communications satellites, so it was no surprise that the Chinese should eventually do the same. Director of the Feng Huo was Peng Shoucheng, bom in 1943, a graduate of Harbin Institute of Military Engineering, originally an expert in electronic countermeasures who had played a key role on the Dong Fang Hong 2 series of comsats. The official owner was identified as the China Telecommunications Broadcast Company, which operated under the Ministry of Post & Telecommunications.

The name Feng Huo was infrequently used by the Chinese. Instead, a new name appeared with the next mission – Shentong – launched in November 2003 and, again referring to the orbital slot allocated, also given the name of both Zhongxing 20 and Zhongxing 21. The third in September 2006 was called Zhongxing 22A, but this again referred to the location, not the satellite, and in effect was co-located with the first, but the Shentong title was not given. This mission was probably a replacement for the first Feng Huo and is called Feng Huo 2 here. The fourth launch on 24th November 2010 was called Zhongxing 20A, located over 130°E and identified as Shentong 1-2. It followed a straight path to geosynchronous orbit, where it arrived after four days. Little information was given on the Zhongxing 1A mission (September 2011), except for a report that debris came down in inhabited areas: one piece damaged houses in Sanxikou in Guizhou, while another fell near Mingkeng village in Jianxi. It was given neither a Feng Huo nor a Shentong designator, but could be either. It was almost certainly the first to use the DFH-4 bus, then becoming the standard communications satellite bus, with the May 2012 mission being the second occasion: certainly this would explain the use of the more powerful CZ-3B.

Chinese literature and promotional material have given little attention to the series, supporting the notion that it might be military. Trying to disentangle and interpret this series is quite hazardous. The precise difference between Feng Huo and Shentong is not known, but Shentong may have Ku-band multiple steerable spot beam antennae. The fifth mission, in May 2012, was given the identifier Shentong 2. It is possible that the two names indicate different owners, Shentong being an army project and Feng Huo combined military forces. The series is summarized in Table 5.3.

Even as the space powers built ever bigger and more powerful launchers, the 1990s saw, paradoxically, the introduction worldwide of ever-smaller satellites. This development was made possible by electronic microcircuits and more sophisticated computers that permitted satellites to be not only much smaller, but also much smarter – able to do more and more without the intervention of ground control. These new versatile satellites could be launched on smaller, less-expensive rockets (e. g. the American Pegasus) or as piggyback payloads on existing rockets (e. g. Russian Dnepr), thus cutting costs even further. Technically, this new generation could be divided into small satellites (less than 500 kg), micro-satellites (less than 100 kg), nano-satellites (less than 10 kg), and even pico-satellites (less than 1 kg!). The principal developer of “large” small satellites is the DFH Satellite Co., a subsidiary of CAST, which makes three buses: CAST100 (50-250 kg); CAST2000
(300-1,000 kg), and CAST968 (around 400 kg). “Small” satellites have generally been made in the universities.

China was quick to join the micro-satellite revolution. Tsinghua University was the center of micro-electronics in China and hosted the National Aerospace High Technology Space Robotic Engineering Research Centre. The center obtained project 863 funding for the development of micro-satellites and set up the Tsinghua Satellite Technology Company in 1998 as a joint enterprise of China Space Machinery and Electrical Equipment Group, Tsinghua University Enterprise, and Tsinghua Tongfang Company. The engineers there turned to the world leaders in this technology, the University of Surrey in England (Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL)), to build their first micro-satellite.

China’s first small satellite entered 700-km high orbit on 20th June 2000, lofted by a Russian Cosmos 3M rocket from Plesetsk. The 75-kg micro-satellite, duly called Tsinghua 1, was 1.2 m high with a volume of only 0.07 m3. No sooner was Tsinghua in orbit than it sent back its first photographs of the China Sea. Tsinghua carried a camera system able to image the Earth in three spectral bands with 39-m resolution so as to monitor vegetation, floods, wild fires, desertification, and red tides. Within a month, it had sent back over 100 images, which the university made available free to anyone requesting them. Its design life was 10 years and, according to senior engineers at Tsinghua, Xu Xin, was a serious attempt to close the gap with Indian and Western imaging systems. In orbit, it also took part in rendezvous maneuvers with another Surrey satellite, the 6.45-kg nano-satellite SNAP-1 (Surrey Nano­satellite Applications Platform). Following its success, China announced the establishment of a National Research Centre for Small Satellites and Related Applications. First ground for an 8,000-m2 site was broken on 20th April 2003.

The University of Tsinghua hoped that this would pave the way for a constellation of micro-satellites, also to be developed with SSTL, a fleet of 70-kg disaster-warning satellites. This fleet would comprise satelhtes from China, Algeria, Nigeria, Turkey, and Britain in a high polar orbit. This five-satellite Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) was duly launched, the Chinese one called Beijing 1 or DMC-4. Built by SSTL for Beijing Landview Mapping Information Technology, it was launched on Cosmos 3M from Plesetsk on 27th October 2005 into a 686-km Sun-synchronous orbit. Beijing 1 was 166 kg in weight, carried a 4-m panchromatic camera capable of transmitting real-time data at 40 МВ/sec, and a 32­m multispectral camera with a swath of 600 km. It had a hard disk with 240-GB storage, accessible at any time. By 2007, it had completed a 32-m-resolution cloud – free map of all China, with a 4-m-resolution map of Beijing. Part of the approach of Surrey was that engineers would learn from their participation in such a satellite so that they could apply the same methods to build their own – an example followed in the case of Nigeria. Meantime, as a learning exercise, Tsinghua went on to build Naxing, substantially more sophisticated and the smallest satellite with three-axis stabilization [21].

On 27th June 2011, SSTL signed an agreement with 21 AT (21st Century Aerospace Technology) for a new satellite to be part of a new DMC, the agreement being witnessed by the two respective prime ministers, David Cameron and Wen

Jiabao. It would be a three-satellite constellation to launch on a Russian Dnepr from Dombarovsky, each of the new satellites having a resolution of 1 m (panchromatic imaging) and 3 m (multispectral). The agreement gave 21 AT exclusive access to the images of China for mapping purposes.

China’s first indigenous micro-satellite was the 88-kg Chuangxin, meaning “creation” or “innovation” – a program associated with the Academy of Sciences Knowledge Innovation Program. This was a store-and-forward communications satellite built in the southern part of the country by the Shanghai Academy for Space Technology Engineering Centre for Micro-satellites for the Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Telecom. It was launched in October 2003 piggyback on the CBERS 2 Brazilian-Chinese Earth resources satellite. It was developed to assist in hydrology, meteorology, and disaster relief: Chuangxin works by picking up data from monitoring points, buoys, and meters, collecting data on water, hydrology, and

electric power and then relaying them to a center source. Tracked by terminals in Shanghai, Beijing, Xinjiang, and Hainan, it showed off its digital communications capacities and was unaffected by two strong solar flares and 29 single-particle incidents. The following two Chuangxin, 1-02 and 1-03, were put into orbit on Tansuo 2 and 4, respectively (see above).

China’s first pico-satellite (1 kg) was MEMS, deployed with Yaogan 2. Its purpose was to test accelerometers, micro-gyros, infrared sensors, and a camera for Zhejiang University and the Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology. It had 26 sides (18 square faces and eight triangle faces), two antennae, and 17 solar cells of 270 cm2 able to provide 2 W of power. The satellite had no moving parts, attitude control, or propulsion system. S-band telemetry is relayed at 4 kbps at 2,300 MHz, with uplink on 2,100 MHz. It is more than likely that the subsequent Pixing subsatellites detached by Yaogan 11, although heavier at 2.5 kg and 3.5 kg, respectively, are derivatives of MEMS, as they were developed in the same laboratory [22].

Other small satellites have been carried piggyback into orbit. Xi Wang was an amateur small radio satellite deployed from Yaogan 8. A small technology development satellite, Tianxun 1, was launched with Yaogan 12 in November 2011. Meaning “day tour”, it was built by Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. It is a 58-kg satellite with a 2.5-kg Earth imaging camera of resolution 30 m built by Suzhou University. Yaogan 14 deployed a small satellite for the National University of Defence Technology. Called Tiantuo 1, or “space pioneer”, it carried an imager, atomic oxygen sensor, and maritime tracking sensor. Between them, these 10 satellites gave China considerable edge in the development of small satellites. Small satellites are summarized in Table 6.12.

With the return of Shenzhou 3, Chinese space experts let it be known that only one more flight would be necessary before a manned spaceflight. This would be the dress rehearsal for the real mission in which two astronauts would spend three days in space. During the summer, 52 experiments weighing 300 kg were selected to fly on the Shenzhou 4 mission, some having taken part in earlier missions. With none of the delays that held back the launching the previous year, Shenzhou 4 soared into the cold night skies of northern China at 00:40 am on 30th December. They were indeed cold, for launch temperature was -18.5°C, rising from a previous -27°C. Present were Shenzhou designer Qi Faren and the 12 men of the yuhangyuan squad, each of whom hoped he would be chosen to fly the next one. Several days before the launch, the yuhangyuan had each entered the cabin on the pad to test entry and exit procedures. The scene echoed the events of 25th March 1961, when Yuri Gagarin and his five colleagues of the final training group went to Baikonour to watch the launch of Korabl Sputnik 5, the final dress rehearsal before the mission of Yostok.

The orbit was spot on: 331-337 km, 91.2 min, 42.41°, tweaked to the perfect orbit on the fifth circuit. Two maneuvers were made to raise the orbit, on 31st December and 3rd January. On each occasion, when the orbit dropped to 91.088 min, engine firings pushed Shenzhou back up to 91.102 min and there was a further set of two thruster firings on 4th January. An important function of the mission was to improve the air supply system, which had left excessive harmful gases on the previous missions.

Shenzhou 4 blasted its retrorockets over Africa, making a giant curved descent over the horn of Africa, Arabia, and Pakistan. In the cold and shghtly foggy recovery region, Mil helicopters, transfer cabins, and recovery vehicles with direction finders on their roof moved in. The cabin came to rest in the dark in the middle of the 60 x 36-km landing zone, targeted 40 km from Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. Teams in orange suits rushed forward to the silvery descent cabin, which lay on its side, and retrieved the two dummies inside. The descent cabin returned to Beijing three days after it touched down. The experimental section was opened and the yuhangyuan climbed inside to examine its condition. The biological experiments were recovered: the Institute for Plant Physiology and Ecology in the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences had devised a complex set of experiments for fusing

cells in animals (mice) and plants (tobacco), so sensitive that they could not be loaded on board until eight hours before take-off. Among the plants and seeds to be flown were vegetables, grain, flowers, medicinal herbs, Pinellia tuber, and goldthread. Peony seeds from Luoyang, Henan, were subsequently exhibited at its next spring show. Ground crews recovered the cell electrofusion unit for life and materials sciences experiments.

As was the case with previous missions, Shenzhou 4 left its orbital module behind. The module maneuvered first on 5th January to 354-366 km. A month later, its altitude had declined to 331-346 km, so the rockets on board fired on 9th February to raise its orbit to 359-366 km. The third maneuver raised the orbit to 359-373 km on 1st April, with additional corrections on 17th and 22nd April to restore the orbital altitude. The module finally decayed on 9th September 2003 after the longest orbital module mission so far.

On board were 11 experiments, including an upper atmosphere detector, high – energy radiation and low-energy radiation detector, biological module, and microgravity fluid tester. Shenzhou 4 continued fluid physics experiments begun on Shi Jian 5 and Mir, this time using drops of inert liquids and silicon oil. The first electrophoresis separation experiment was performed, the outcome of research initiated under project 863 in the early 1990s. The cabin also carried ion and proton detectors.

Shenzhou 4 carried a multi-mode microwave remote sensor system first developed by Li Jing, also under project 863. This combined a radar altimeter, radar scatter meter, and multichannel microwave radiometer, called a Multimode Microwave Sensor (MMS), to observe in five bands the atmosphere and ocean, specifically their temperature and winds through clouds. There was a laser microwave altimeter to measure the altitude of the module from the ground to 10-cm accuracy (e. g. 331.25631 km). The altimeter was only 20 cm across and 800 g in weight and was installed on the bottom of the spacecraft. Over 2,000 measurements were taken over three days both to test out its accuracy and to infer information about changes in the Earth’s oceans. The quadruple mass spectrometer atmospheric composition detector took readings from January to March 2003 over the southern hemisphere summer. During geomagnetic disturbances, the level of nitrogen in the atmosphere rose and the level of oxygen declined, more so closer to the South Pole, possibly as a result of the heating of the upper atmosphere. Shenzhou 4’s orbital module was the third in the series to carry an atmospheric density detector and, several years later, their accumulated outcomes were published. They showed that, during quiet solar periods, atmospheric density had a diurnal pattern, falling at night and rising during the daytime. During a strong magnetic disturbance, air density could rise as much as 56% within 7 hr, falling back to its original value in not more than three days [8].

The idea of a new generation of launch vehicles goes back more than 20 years. The decision to proceed with a manned space program in 1992 was linked to a new fleet of launchers. In 1992, at the International Astronautical Congress, Xiandong Bao of the Shanghai Electromechanical Equipment Research Institute outlined in A Modular Space Transportation System a new launcher system able, in different variants, to lift a range of payloads of up to 20 tonnes at the top end. His baseline study marked China’s move away from nitric fuels and to larger-diameter rockets of more than 3-m diameter, and the concept of the launcher family in which different combinations of stages are clustered to send smaller or larger payloads to orbit [8].

In the event, development of the new fleet of launchers would take a long time and, for the Shenzhou and Tiangong programs, China would rely on its existing Long March fleet. A Mir-class space station, though, would require a much heavier rocket capable of putting at least 20 tonnes into orbit. From the beginning, this was called the Long March 5 project in the West and eventually it acquired this name in China itself. From an early stage, the Chinese made it clear that it would be built in multiple versions, from light to heavy, and that it would form the backbone of the launcher fleet to at least 2050. They also took the decision, as did Russia, of phasing out toxic launchers in favor of more environmentally acceptable fuels (kerosene or hydrogen with liquid oxygen).

To kick off the project, the government allocated project 863 funding to develop some of the critical technologies necessary. Project 863 money was focused on the new engines, cost containment, and the achievement of reliabihty. During their earher shopping visits to Moscow, the Chinese had been unable to persuade the Russians to part with the designs of the huge RD-170 engine used on their Energiya rocket, although they were allowed to buy its upper-stage RD-0120 engine (they bought three: one for testing, one for taking apart, one for spare).

At the 2000 International Astronautical Congress, Wu Yansheng and Wang Xiaojun presented A Prospect over the Development of Long March Vehicles in the Next Decade, reporting progress on the design. They outlined the Long March 5 as a 55-m-tall rocket using liquid-hydrogen and liquid-oxygen main engines, flanked by four large strap-ons, weighing up to 800 tonnes, with a lift-off thrust of up to 1,000 tonnes and able to place 23 tonnes in low Earth orbit or send 11 tonnes to geostationary orbit. The next iteration became available not long thereafter, when the February 2001 Aerospace Magazine presented the dimensions of the rocket. The stage would have diameters of 2.25 m (called the K2), 3.35 m (the КЗ), and 5 m, depending on the number of lower stages used and the length of the upper stage. The capacity of the launcher grew to 13 tonnes to geosynchronous orbit and 25 tonnes to low Earth orbit, where it settled. It would be kerosene-fuelled for the lower stages (120 tonnes’ thrust) and hydrogen-fuelled for the upper (50 tonnes’ thrust). Two years later, officials set program targets of a reliability of 98.5%, commercial prices 30% lower than the Long March 3, and a launch preparation period of 15 days.

The CZ-5 program obtained governmental approval in June 2004 and development was assigned to the China Academy of Launcher Technology (CALT).

In 2007, the dimensions were given at 5-m diameter, 59.4 m tall, weight 643 tonnes, thrust 825 tonnes. The first cargo would be the 9-tonne Feng Yun 4 metsat. Later figures were given of a lift-off mass of up to 790 tonnes and lift-off thrust of up to 10,680 kN.

Two new engines were required. Although inspired by the now aging YF-20 design, they were larger and more powerful, with oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle engines. These were a 120-tonne-thrust liquid-oxygen and RP-1 kerosene YF – 100 engine for the first stage and a 50-tonne liquid-oxygen and liquid-hydrogen YF – 77 engine for the upper stage. The YF-100 engines were to have a thrust of 1,179 kN and a specific impulse of 305 sec while the YF-77 hydrogen engine was to have a thrust of 540 kN and a specific impulse of 432 m/sec. Their development took over 10 years. In 2012, the YF-100 was successfully tested at the 7103 factory of the Academy of Aerospace Liquid Propulsion Technology (AALPT) in Xian to 20,000 revolutions a minute for 200 sec, reaching a temperature of 3,000°C, and delivery of the first production YF-lOOs began. Its high-pressure staged combustion cycle engine made China only the second country after Russia to master the technologies

Long March 5 (left), compared to the powerful but Line drawing, showing clearly the thinner Long March 3 series on its right. Courtesy: Paolo importance of the strap-on boos – Ulivi. ters. Courtesy: Mark Wade.

involved. Finally, the CZ-5 design was frozen, with up to six variants (Table 10.8). In each case, the core stage and second stage are 5 m wide.

Various different letters were given for the different models. The D is the largest beast, for 10 YF-lOOs will fire together at lift-off: two main-stage engines, with four strap-ons, each with two engines, its 784 tonnes comparing to the American Delta IV (760 tonnes) and Atlas V (956 tonnes) and Europe’s Ariane 5 (733 tonnes). While primarily intended to launch large space station modules, at the Zhuhai air show in 2009, China specifically identified the CZ-5D version as a rival to Europe’s Ariane 5, able to put two satellites into 24-hr orbit simultaneously, compared to Ariane’s one large and one medium. First launch was set for 2014. In 2012, the first pictures were published of CZ-5 production, welding, and assembly.

These early achievements took place against a background of continued turmoil. The Military Commission, which was dominated by leftists led by Lin Biao, persuaded the government and party to adopt a new five-year plan (1971-76) which had the slogan “three years catching up, two years overtaking”. This plan committed the country to a furious expansion of the space program, with eight new launch vehicles and 14 new satellites in five years (other reports speak of an average of nine satelhtes a year). Many of these projects, which most scientists considered to be unnecessary and unrealistic, got under way, though few saw the Ught of day. They disrupted existing projects and saw the commencement of several projects which later had to be abandoned. There were fresh political interruptions after the dramatic events of September 1971 when Lin Biao fled China for the Soviet Union: en route, his plane was shot down by Chinese fighters and it crashed in flames. There were purges and counter-purges of his associates in the space program. Order did not return until after the death of Mao in September 1976 and the overthrow by the military of the Gang of Four led by his wife Jiang Qing the following month.

The 1971-76 plan was scaled down to more limited objectives, the principal one being to launch a geostationary communications satellite. The emerging leader, Deng Xiaoping, presented a much revised space policy in August 1978. China was a developing country and “as far as space technology is concerned, we are not taking part in the space race. There is no need for us to go to the Moon and we should concentrate our resources on urgently needed and functional practical satellites”. The space budget was trimmed to meet more modest ambitions, falling to 0.035% of Gross National Product, traihng not only the big space powers, but neighboring comparators Japan (0.04%) and India (0.14%), too. Deng Xiaoping encouraged newer, younger, and more pragmatic engineers and managers to come forward in industry, concentrating on modernization rather than ideological struggle, although it took some time to undo the damage done to science, education, and industry by the cultural revolution.

Several months later, in October 1978, Deng Xiaoping announced the “four modernizations”: science and military technology, agriculture, education, and industry (dissidents cheekily added a fifth modernization: democracy). This began the process of opening the country not only to foreign investment and private enterprise, but also to international cooperation in science. In 1980, China joined the International Astronautical Federation, the Chinese membership body being the Chinese Society of Astronautics, whose president was Tsien Hsue Shen. China joined the International Telecommunications Union and the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Twenty years of isolation from the world space community came to an end, with visits by space experts from the European Space Agency, France, Japan, and an American delegation even toured. China hosted its first international space conferences on space in 1985. China negotiated with the United States for the use of Landsat data and purchased a ground station to receive its data the following year. By 1988, China was sending its most promising engineering graduates to courses in the MIT, from where their predecessors had been driven out in the 1950s. China joined the international committee on space research, COSPAR, in 1992.

The Chinese space program opened up within China itself. Workers in the space industry had been prohibited, on pain of extreme penalties, from telling their families where they worked and, in a practice borrowed from the Soviet Union, they were assigned mailbox numbers, their institutes never being geographically identified. The greatest challenge faced by new graduates assigned to the space industry was to actually find their future place of work, since virtually no one was allowed to tell them where it was! Likewise, the railway fine to Jiuquan had not been marked on any map. From now on, most space organizations were publicly named, identified, and listed.

Sergei Korolev, Russia’s great chief designer, once remarked that at the heart of a successful space program lay a sound rocket engine. Russian rocket engines were designated RD – (raketa dgvatel), or “rocket engine”, from -1 onward and China has followed a similar system, using the designator YF-, or yeti fadong (“liquid-type engine”). Data on Chinese rocket engines are much less satisfactory than the Russian data. China has developed a very small number of rocket engine types, but with many variants. In essence, there are four types: the YF-1 to YF-3 series used at the very beginning; the YF-20 to YF-24 series used for the CZ-2 and CZ-3; the YF-40 series used for the CZ-4; and the YF-73 and YF-75 series used for the CZ-3 upper stage (incoming engines related to the Long March 5 are discussed in Chapter 10). These rocket engines have been adapted and modified to serve the entire range of the Long March families. In addition, China has developed a small number of solid – rocket motors and minor engines.

The YF-20 engine, which dates to 1965, with its variants, has been used for the Long March 2, 3, and 4 rockets, being introduced on the Long March 2C in 1975. The YF-20 has a thrust of 70 tonnes and uses UDMH with nitrogen tetroxide as oxidizer. For the Long March 2, the Chinese clustered four YF-20s together to provide a lift-off thrust of 280 tonnes (this configuration was called the YF-21 or 20A). An improved version, the YF-20B, with 7% more thrust, was developed for the Long March ЗА, 3B, and 4 (when clustered, they may also be called the YF-21B). The YF-20B was introduced on the Long March 2D in 1992 and a single YF-20B engine is used on each strap-on booster for the Long March 3B. These are big engines, weighing nearly 3 tonnes (2,850 kg).

For the second stage, the YF-22 engine is used: it is a modification of the YF-20 and is designed to light at altitude. It was introduced as far back as 1975 on the Long

March 2C second stage. Later versions were called the YF-23 and YF-24 series, several with A and В sub-designators. Note that, in directories of Chinese rockets, YF-20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 designators are often seen, but they belong to the same family, the differences between them being small.

The YF-40 is the third-stage engine used on the Long March 4 rocket introduced in 1988. Third-stage engines are relatively small in size and thrust compared to the first and second stages, but they have longer burn times, in the order of 320 sec. These are small engines, 166 kg in weight, 1.2 m long, and 65 cm in diameter.

When the Long March 3 flew in 1984, China became the third country in the world to tame liquid hydrogen-fuelled upper stages after the United States (Centaur) and Europe (Ariane). Not only are hydrogen fuels difficult to master, but a complication is that the third stage must be restartable – firing once to enter Earth

orbit, a second time about 50 min later for the transfer to geosynchronous orbit. Design of a third stage, restartable hydrogen-fuelled engine, the YF-73, began in 1965, but testing of the new designs was not completed until 1979 and, even then, the first flight test failed in January 1984. This problem must have been promptly identified and remedied, for the next mission, four months later, went perfectly. The thrust of the YF-73 liquid-hydrogen third stage was 4.5 tonnes, with a burn time of 13.3 min. An improved version, the YF-75, was introduced with the Long March ЗА in 1994 and was since used by the 3B. The YF-75 weighs 550 kg, is 2.8 m tall, and 3 m in diameter, and has a thrust of 8 tonnes. Restarting problems have, disappointingly, recurred from time to time (though such problems are not entirely absent from the other space programs, especially Russia’s).

China has developed two families of solid-rocket motor engines: the GF series and the PKM (Perigee Kick Motor). With the beginning of flights to 24-hr orbit in 1984, a new generation of solid-fuel rockets was required to carry out the maneuvers necessary to ensure that communications satellites accurately reached their final orbital destinations. The PKM was developed to complete the transfer of comsats to geostationary orbit. Built by the Haxi Chemical and Machinery Company, it is 1.7 m

in diameter, 2.5 m long, and weighs 5,978 kg (5,444 kg is propellant). The GF series was used as a final stage to get the Feng Yun 2 series into 24-hr orbit (the 729-kg GF-36) and the smaller GF-14, 23, and 23A solid-rocket engines have been used as retrorockets for the FSW 0, 1, and 2 series, respectively. The GF-15 solid-rocket motor (500 kg) was developed as the apogee motor for the Dong Fang Hong 2 comsats and the 15B for the Dong Fang Hong 2A.

Overall, Chinese rocket-engine development has been conservative, rather like in Europe, leaving cutting-edge development to the original masters of rocket-engine design: Russia. Evidence of an interest in innovation came at the Asian Joint Conference on Propulsion and Power, held in Xian in March 2012, when reports came out of Chinese interest in developing a methane engine. Exotic engines had been developed in Russia, first by Valentin Glushko’s Gas Dynamics Laboratory (the RD-301), later resumed in the Franco-Russian Ural engine development program. China began its work on electric propulsion in the 1960s, but did not progress until a pulsed plasma thruster, the MDT-2A, was first run in the 1980s and an arcjet in the 1990s.

Following the successful launch of the Long March 3, China began to offer its Long March series of launchers to the West. Little notice was taken at the time, but the situation changed when America’s launchers were grounded due to the loss of the Shuttle and problems with the Titan and Delta, while Europe’s Ariane was out of action as well.

There were several drivers of this development. First was the accession to the Chinese leadership of Deng Xiaoping. He reduced state space budgets and, in an export-or-perish drive, required the industry to find markets at home and abroad. Several space companies soon began to make consumer products, from motorcycles to refrigerators, to fund their core business. In May 1984, deputy aeronautics minister Liu Jiyuan allocated ¥300,000 (€30,000, or European Currency Units (ECUs)) for a feasibility study of providing commercial rockets to the world market,

the aim being to put up communications satellites. This was approved in April 1985 and first announced at the Paris air show that summer. China pitched its offer 15% below the then-prevailing Western prices. Several joint-venture companies were formed to develop communications: Asiasat (Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co., 1988), a Chinese-Hong Kong-British venture which later became a publicly traded company, and APT (Asia Pacific Telecommunications), trading as Apstar (1992), a Chinese-Hong Kong-Thai company, which later, with German investment, became Sinosat. A third, Chinasat, was a domestic company created by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, sometimes also called China Telecom, short for China Telecommunications Broadcast Services.

In the event, China’s first commercial launch was not a communications satellite, but a small Swedish Mailstar store-and-forward satellite, an agreement being signed as early as January 1986. The leader on the Swedish side was Sven Grahn, who was not only senior in the Swedish space agency, but an amateur radio enthusiast who had spent a lifetime following Russian and Chinese space signals, so he could not be more familiar with the Chinese space program. Eventually, Mailstar was replaced by Freja, a scientific satellite, launched with the recoverable satellite FSW 1-4 in 1992 (see Chapter 4).

The offer of the Long March was of considerable interest to Western companies trying to get their communications satellites into orbit. China set itself the initial modest target of obtaining 4% of the world launcher market. The Great Wall Industry Corporation was tasked with marketing Chinese launchers abroad and established offices in Europe and the United States. After several false starts, China signed its first agreement with Asiasat to launch an American satellite, to be called Asiasat 1, on the CZ-3.

The problem for both was that China, and the Soviet Union, were embargoed by restrictions designed to prevent them both from undercutting American prices and the intentional or inadvertent transfer of technology to China which might be used for military purposes. The Americans required any American company to get permission to launch an American satellite (or any American parts of any satellite) on a Chinese launcher. This clearly extended to any European satellite using any American parts. Granted the interdependence of the Western computer and electronics world, this effectively meant any satellite. The American embassy in Beijing at once told the Chinese government to back off, but underestimated the determination or, more likely, desperation of the launcher companies. China managed to win a contract to launch an Indonesian satellite but, when the Americans threatened to pull foreign aid, Indonesia caved in.

The Chinese were prepared to pay a heavy price to get their launcher to market and, after four years of negotiation, a Sino-American Memorandum of Agreement was signed in January 1989. The Chinese were permitted nine commercial satelhte launches for the period to 1994 – a quota extended to 11 satellites for 1995-2001, with the proviso that China would not offer prices more than 15% below Western rates. The language of the agreement was humiliating, imposing multiple commercial and security restrictions and requiring a lengthy series of commitments by China, with nothing guaranteed in return. These issues were not unique to China, for the

United States also accused Europe of undercutting American launcher prices with its Ariane rocket, but presumably the United States was not in the position to impose a comparable agreement on Europe. The Americans gave permission to China to launch Asiasat 1 in December 1989, only four months before a scheduled and penalty-laden take-off deadline. While awaiting launch, Asiasat was guarded around the clock by a team of no fewer than 18 American security guards. It duly launched in April 1990.

Asiasat was at the light end of the comsat market and new comsats coming on line were heavier. To fly the newer, heavier comsats, China developed a purpose-built heavy-lift version of the Long March, the Long March 2E (CZ-2E). Discussions were held over 1987 with the American satellite maker, Hughes, and the Australian satellite operator, Aussat (later, Optus), about how to best meet their requirements. The following year, China won a contract to launch two Hughes-made Optus satellites, with a target date of June 1990 (and penalties if it was not met), even as the 2E was still on the drawing board.

Despite its name, the Long March 2E fitted more naturally with the Long March 3 family and, like them, was launched from Xi Chang. The Long March 2E was a stretched version of the Long March 2, with more powerful engines (YF-20B) and four liquid-fuelled strap-on rockets. At lift-off, eight engines lit up simultaneously – the four core engines of the first stage and the four strap-ons – creating a tremendous noise (142 decibels). It weighed 463 tonnes, making it China’s heaviest rocket and, at the time, its most powerful. Price for a launch was €59m (or €82m for the CZ-3B). Development cost for the 2E was ¥350m, or €35m, including a new pad at Xi Chang. At the same time, China proceeded with phasing out the CZ – 3 (1.4-tonne payload), replacing it with the more powerful CZ-3A (payload 2.6 tonnes) and the even more powerful CZ-3B (the CZ-3A with the strap-ons of the CZ-2E, giving it a payload of 5.5 tonnes). The decision to build the CZ-2E was a controversial one, for it was an improvised, opportunist one, never an original part of the space program. The 2E went from drawing board to arrival on the pad in less than 18 months – an astonishing achievement for which Wang Yongzhi was later rewarded by being put in charge of the manned spaceflight program, where the CZ – 2F was in turn based on the CZ-2E.

The Long March 2E made its debut in June 1990, with mixed results, successfully putting a small Pakistani satellite, Badr, in orbit, but a simulated Optus test went badly wrong. The Perigee Kick Motor (PKM) fired in the wrong direction, back into the atmosphere, instead of into geosynchronous orbit.

The first fully successful commercial launch on the CZ-2E took place with Australia’s Optus 1 in August 1991. A hundred Australians and other visitors attended the launch in Xi Chang and the event was broadcast live on Chinese central television. Cameras switched between the rocket lifting into the early morning sky and its hopeful customers eagerly watching it climb skywards. The purpose of the Aussat Optus system was to provide radio and television services for remote areas of Australia, air-traffic control, and educational and medical services by television. China hoped that it would be the first of many Australian and then American launches.

Because of the failure of the Chinese PKM in the June 1990 launch, the Australians insisted on using an American kick motor, the Star 63F. When the second Optus, B-2, was launched on 21st December 1992, a cloud of gas could be noted emerging from the shroud at the top of the launch vehicle only 70 sec into the mission. The rest of the launching proceeded normally, but there was widespread consternation when it transpired that all that had reached orbit was satellite wreckage. It seems that the satellite met with a fatal accident about a minute into the mission but the shroud had contained the explosion.

There was considerable three-sided recrimination afterwards between the Chinese, the Australians, and the United States as to who was responsible. The Americans and the Western press blamed the Chinese for a faulty shroud that failed under pressure; the Chinese blamed the Americans for failing to attach the satellite to its upper stage sufficiently to withstand vibration. In the end, both the Chinese and the Americans agreed to paper over the cracks, eventually issuing a joint statement to the effect that neither the launcher nor the satellite was to blame! The Chinese recovered somewhat with two successful launches in 1994 – Apstar 1 in July (it operated until March 2006) and Optus B-3 in August, effectively replacing the satellite which had been destroyed two years earlier.

On 25th January 1995, Apstar 2, carrying another Star 63F kick motor, was lost. Fifty-one seconds into the mission, there was a catastrophic explosion and the entire launcher and satellite were destroyed. Television pictures showed the rocket crashing in an ugly billowing cloud of red, yellow, and black toxic nitric smoke. Six villagers died and 23 were injured. Mysteriously, the explosion appeared to start at the top of the rocket, not the bottom part that was actually firing at the time. Apparently, the Star 63 exploded again, but the shroud did not contain its force. The Long March was grounded while the problems were sorted out and more recriminations flew back and forth. In a repeat performance of what had happened the previous year, the next two launches went smoothly – Asiasat 2 (Hong Kong, November, with the Chinese EPKM) and EchoStar (United States, December). The causes of the two satellite losses – Optus B-2 and Apstar 2 – were never satisfactorily resolved, but the most plausible explanation, put forward by Phil Clark, was that the use of the Star 63F, for which the CZ-2E had not been designed, destabilized the rocket during the period of maximum dynamic pressure on the launcher [1]. Apstar returned to Chinese launchers again later, but its subsequent owners, APT Satellite Co., also used Russian launchers.

Then disaster intervened once more. 14th February 1996 saw the launch of a €70m American Intelsat 708 advanced communications satellite. This was the first flight of the Long March 3B, a new version of the Long March 3 able to lift a record 5 tonnes to geosynchronous orbit. Although a new version, it relied heavily on well – tested rockets: the main stages were essentially those of the Long March ЗА while the strap-on rockets had been verified on the Long March 2E. However, because the Chinese had received less than they had hoped in launch fees, they did not have the resources to make a test flight of the 3B before committing the new rocket to its first commercial mission. This decision proved calamitous.

Ground controllers were horrified as, a mere 2 sec after lift-off, the rocket began to tilt to one side, turned sideward, and exploded in an enormous bang 2 sec later, showering debris for miles around. The rocket fell 1,850 m away on a hotel near to where dignitaries were watching the launch. There was almost no one inside at the time and the ruins were later demohshed. The crash was so shattering that no large pieces of debris were ever found. It was a very visible failure, screened instantly throughout the Western world and provoking much comment about temperamental Chinese rockets. Whatever was involved in the Optus B-2 and Apstar 2 failures, this time, no one could argue but that there was a fault in the launch vehicle. The official

death toll was six, with 57 injuries. The South China Morning Post reported that 100 people died when parts of the rocket fell on the village of Yi, most dying of toxic burns. These claims were strenuously refuted in the Hong Kong Standard, in which the Great Wall spokesperson insisted that most viewers had been well outside the 2­km perimeter around the pad where the rocket had exploded.

Western investors and insurers predictably later called the episode “the St Valentine’s day massacre”. Two investigating committees were appointed and international experts invited to join. The China Great Wall Industry Corporation stated that the guidance platform had gone badly wrong, causing the accident (as it was to do so only four months later on the maiden voyage of Europe’s brand new Ariane 5). With the crash of the Long March 3B, Western investors lost confidence in the Chinese launcher system and satellites due for launch on Chinese rockets became uninsurable. The queue of customers took its satellites (EchoStar 2, Asiasat 3, and Globalstar) elsewhere, mainly Russia.

China continued its efforts despite these severe setbacks. Some communications companies in the Asia Pacific region, especially those with direct links to China, had good political and territorial reasons to stay with the Chinese launchers, even if Western companies bolted. Five months after the Intelsat disaster, in July 1996, the Long March 3 put Apstar 1A into its proper orbit at 133°E, where it operated until November 2005, when it moved to 125°E, before drifting off station in January 2006. Then problems arose again: only the following month (August), a Long March 3 stranded the Hughes-built Zhongxing 7 half-way to geosynchronous orbit. Follow­ing this further failure, the Chinese instituted a rigorous program for greater quality control and launch safety, introducing international quality standards (the ISO-9000 quality mark) and a quality control company, the New Decade Institute, insisting that an international team of French, German, and British experts approve the reforms.

These measures obviously paid off, for, on the early morning of 20th August 1997, the Long March 3B eventually made its debut, lofting the Agila 2 comsat for the Philippines, a new customer. The placing of the satellite in orbit raised a few eyebrows, for the apogee was 44,500 km, far above the 36,000-km norm. Was this a bad engine burn, yet another malfunction? In fact, this maneuver marked the introduction of what is called the super-synchronous orbit, a hitherto unadvertised feature of the Long March 3B (and the ЗА as well). This is a clever technique of performing a very precise, carefully calculated, extra-thrust burn out to 44,000 km or so – one that produces a subsequent saving on the final insertion maneuver. The Agila launch was challenged by the United States, the Philippine company Mabuhay accused of undercutting the launch price agreement, but the Clinton administration did not pursue the matter further.

Applications programs were first mooted in the 1980s, such as Zi Yuan and Jiang Jing Shan’s plans for maritime observations. China has, as this chapter shows, now developed a broad range of satellites for purposes of apphcations, such as weather forecasting, Earth observations, and navigation. Most Western commentaries have focused on the degree of covert militarization within the program, from Zi Yuan as a military imaging program to Beidou, more fancifully, as a warhead targeting system. Yaogan may well be a comprehensive optical, radar, and electronic intelligence system “hiding in plain view”. The focus on covert military applications, though, risks overlooking the substantial expansion of civilian applications and the level of specialization. China started from a base of almost no knowledge, skills, or information in the applications field, as evidenced by continued use of Western – sourced data and skills right into the 2000s (e. g. Dragon). Nevertheless, over time, China filled in all the major fields of space applications: meteorology, Earth resources, maritime observations, mapping, and navigation, and has matched (and possibly exceeded) Western standards. China’s methodical approach is well in evidence, with experimental satellites followed by operational versions (e. g. Haiyang, Tansuo), ever-greater specialization (e. g. Tianhui), and micro-satellites to test new technologies (e. g. Chuangxin). The performance of quite small satellites, such as Haiyang and Huanjing, is impressive. The intelligent use of micro-satellites enabled a considerable expansion and diversification of the program at low cost. Applications satellites have led to substantial economic gains to China arising for meteorology, Earth resources, environmental protection, disaster salvage, mapping, ocean management, and public service navigation. Table 6.13 illustrates the range of operating altitudes and how extensive they have become.

From this, it is apparent that the Chinese developed the ability to carry out observational work from an ever-greater height, enabling a wider field of view to be studied from ever more specialized missions lasting ever longer. Whereas in the 1970s

and 1980s, FSW provided low-altitude observations for quite a limited period, typically two weeks, nowadays much smaller satellites can offer detailed specialized digital imaging coverage for missions of many years’ duration.

The next challenge for China is likely to be the creation of a user community – always a problem in a command economy. A strong user community has driven the standards and reach of applications programs in Europe, the United States, and other countries and, indeed, CBERS has shown the way to do this in its collaborative program with Brazil. The Roadmap 2050 proposals correctly identified this as the next challenge. In the 2010s, China began to create the infrastructure necessary to store applications data and make them accessible (e. g. the Centre for Earth Observation (CEODE), the Satellite Oceanic Application Centre, and the expansion of the China Resources Satellite Application Centre (CRESDA)). Next, as outlined by the Roadmap (Chapter 10), will come the Digital Earth Scientific Platform and the necessary supercomputing systems to make it accessible worldwide.