Category China in Space

As had been the practice in the Russian space program, Chinese scientists used applications satellites to carry scientific instruments (equivalent Russian add-on packages were called пайка modules, “nauk” being the Russian word for “science”). These were flown on the first communications satellites in 1984 and 1986. Both the first, Shiyan Tongbu Tongxin Weixing, and the second, Shiyong Tongbu Tongxing Weixing 1, carried particle detectors (semi-conductor and electron detector, semi­conductor proton detector) and a broadband soft x-ray detector to measure solar bursts and resultant x-ray storms. Their purpose was to measure changes in the intensity of electrons and protons in 24-hr orbit, as well as static electricity on the spacecraft. A small telescope studied proton fluxes in the 10-30-MeV range and electrons from 0.5 MeV to 1 MeV. Solar bursts were detected and measured on 21st April 1984 and 4th February 1986. Solar x-rays were surveyed in the 1-8-A range.

Scientific instruments were then fitted to weather satellites. Feng Yun 1-1 carried equipment to detect cosmic rays, protons, and alpha particles, as well as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and ion particles in the Earth’s radiation belts. Feng Yun 1-2 carried a cosmic ray composition monitor in the range of 4-23 MeV to detect and measure both solar proton events and galactic cosmic rays, and these were matched against readings at the Zhongshan Antarctic base. It detected helium, nitrogen, oxygen, heavy ion, and anomalous iron particles in the inner radiation belt and five solar proton events over September 1990 to February 1991. It flew through the inner radiation belt South Atlantic Anomaly and measured the changing intensities of protons, alpha particles, and carbon ion and iron atoms. Doing so at a time of solar maximum proved to be harmful to the satellite, for the radiation levels disrupted its logic board, causing a complete breakdown at one stage. Energetic particle detectors were designed to measure how heavy ions, protons, and electrons affect weather, one outcome being a mapping of the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly.

Feng Yun 1-2 carried two additional experiments – two balloons called Qi Qi 1 and 2 (the name Da Qi has also been used). Their purpose was to measure the density of the upper atmosphere between 400 km and 900 km, and they were tracked by seven ground stations. Made out of polyester film and measuring 2.5 m and 3 m in diameter, deployed in similar orbits, they decayed from orbit the following year, one in March, the other in July. Diagrams were duly published of fluctuations in atmospheric density over the first 90 days of the mission. They were the first scientific satellites to benefit from project 863. Combined with accurate ground observations, they proved to be a cheap but effective way of measuring atmospheric density during solar maximum.

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The geosynchronous Feng Yun 2-1 carried a high-energy particle detector and solar x-ray detector to measure solar proton and high-energy particle events, while later 2-3 carried a solar x-ray detector to measure x-rays from the Sun above 4 keY in 10 channels and the results were compared to the American Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES). The spacecraft also carried two scientific detectors, one to measure 3-300-MeV protons and the other to measure

0. 15-5.70-MeV electrons. For 2008-09, they measured little, due to the solar

minimum, only finding electrons in the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly and around the North and South Poles. The problem of radiation damage to satellites operating in 24-hr orbit continued to bother the Chinese, for they fitted high-energy electron detectors to Feng Yun 2-3. They supplied three years of data, from 2005 to 2008, giving more accurate predictions of the frequency of upset events. Later FY-3s will be fitted with instruments to measure the ionosphere and auroras [10].

The scientific results of the Chang e mission were substantial. Data return was 1.4 ТВ of raw data, transformed into 4 ТВ of science data, but, more importantly, they enabled China to start building its own repository of scientific knowledge.

The first objective was for China to compile its own Moon map, essential for its subsequent rover and sample return missions. The map combined both the imaging system and the altimeter, whose purpose was to give a precise topography. To do this, the imaging system made 589 tracks of data (or complete photographic passes), matched against 9.16m altimeter measurements.

The definitive map from the Chang e mission was published in December 2009 in Science in China and the Chinese Science Bulletin, authored by Jinsong Ping, Qian Huang, Chao Chen, and Qing Lieng. This made China the third country to publish its own Moon maps, after the Soviet Union and the United States, with the bonus of three-dimensionality. It was a 1:2,500,000 map with contours at every 500 m. It provided a full topography with elevation – moreover one that revealed fresh details of the Moon, such as a possible fault structure along the Apennines Uke one of the Earth’s tectonic plates. Analysts put forward the idea that the Apennine chain was a fault line similar to the Himalayas on the Earth [5]. Five tectonic maps were also in preparation for later publication. A bilingual Chinese-English atlas was published in 2010.

The map refined existing maps and found new features. A new impact basin was identified – the 470-km-wide Guanghangong basin – and a new crater, 190 km across – Wugang. There was a new volcano, Yutu, 2 km tall and 300 km across in

the Ocean of Storms, with another volcano nearby – Guisho. New craters were named after leading Chinese scientists: Cai Lun, after the first-century вс inventor of paper; Bi Sheng, after the eleventh-century inventor of movable type; and astronomer Zhang Yuzhe (1902-86). Following representations from China, the International Astronautical Union approved the naming of 14 features on the Moon after Chinese scientists – a small but growing Chinese proportion of the 1993 named features of the Moon [6].

The use of the altimeter enabled a much-improved knowledge of lunar topography, with an accuracy of at least 31 m. It determined that the Moon was

more spherical than the Earth by a factor of 1/963.7256 compared to the Earth’s 1/298.257. The radius of the Moon was re-measured as 1,737.013 km. Mare Ignii was identified as the biggest mass concentration (mascon). Profiles were published of individual features, such as Mare Moscoviense. Several years later, a critical account of the imaging system praised its definition (“better than the American Clementine”), but criticized its handling of bright light levels [7].

The gamma-ray spectrometer enabled Chinese scientists to make a chemical map of the Moon. The gamma-ray spectrometer scanned the Moon every three seconds between 27th November 2007 and 25th July 2008 and sent over 2.4m spectra to Miyun and Kunming ground stations. A global map of uranium, iron, titanium, and KREEP abundance was published. Chang e provided the most detailed iron and titanium maps since the American Clementine probe. Such maps were especially important in reconstructing the history of the Moon: iron was generally found on the top of lava flows and its presence indicated the order in which the lunar seas were flooded. The imaging interferometer compiled an iron and titanium abundance map of 84% of the Moon between 70°N and 70°S and a cross-section of the Mare Crisium was published. Further analysis showed the distribution of orthopyroxines, clinopyroxenes, olivine, pigeonite, and plagioclase across highland and mare areas, with more detailed studies made of Copernicus, Zucchius, Mare Orientale, Ariastarchus, Tsiolkovsky, and Tycho. A new model of these processes was put forward by Lu Yangxiaoyi, showing how melts of basaltic lava reached the mare from deep in the lunar interior in three periods of lunar history over 2bn—4bn years ago [8].

The amount of Helium 3 was recalculated downward from 5bn tonnes to lbn tonnes: 658,000 tonnes on the near side and 286,000 tonnes on the far side. The presence of Helium 3 was closely connected to levels of solar wind, the age of the lunar surface, and the presence of titanium. Chinese scientists then turned to the long-standing problem of whether there might still be water ice on the Moon. Chang e’s four-channel microwave radiometer first made a temperature map of the south polar region. Then it focused on Cabeus crater, where the American LCROSS mission had already impacted and offered comparative data. It found that the temperature in the bottom and permanently shaded part of Cabeus was 70 К and suggested a water ice content there of 2.8% [9].

The microwave sounder led to a detailed knowledge of the regolith, published by the Lunar and Planetary Research Centre, in “Methods and Advances on Lunar Soil Thickness” (Acta Minneralogica Sinica, 27(1) (2007)). Based on the temperature measurements of the microwave sounder, an algorithm was devised that made it possible to calculate the depth of the regolith all over, dividing it into a dust layer, regolith layer, and bedrock. The regolith was found to be much thinner than previous assumptions, but thicker on the far side:

• mare regolith ranged from 1.2 m to 11 m, the average being 4.5 m;

• it was thinnest in the Mare Imbrium, thickest in the Sea of Fertility and Mare Nectaris;

• highland thickness was 1-15 m, averaging 7.6 m;

• far-side thickness was thicker, at more than 8 m.

Using the same instrument, a temperature brightness map of the Moon was published, the equatorial regions showing up as bright red, with greens appearing the farther away one went and, at the poles themselves, the blues of shaded craters. The temperature brightness was higher in mare than in uplands, higher at the equator than at the poles, and higher on the near side than on the far side [10].

Chinese scientists compared their results with earlier American results (notably Clementine and Apollo), Russian findings (Luna), and their contemporaries (Chandrayan of India and Kaguya of Japan), especially to iron out differences between them due either to the calibration of instruments or interpretation of data. They specifically compared results to data gathered at Apollo landing sites, Apollo 16 being the benchmark. They later corrected their altimeter findings when a discrepancy of 145 m was identified. They also re-photographed the landing sites for Apollo 12, 14, and 15 [11]. Finally, the solar wind detector found few disturbances and low temperatures in the solar wind, except when the Moon passed through the Earth’s magnetotail.

Chang e achieved its four objectives of making a map, analyzing the chemistry and thickness of the lunar surface and characterizing the lunar environment, as well as overcoming the technically demanding trajectory used to reach the Moon in the first place. Chinese scientists should have been more than satisfied with the results and now had important data and analysis to share internationally.

Many people provided generously of their time and energies so that this book and its predecessors could be written. I especially acknowledge the late Rex Hall, who shared his knowledge, files, and information over many years, and Lynn Hall, who continued to make them available to me. Many others kindly provided reports, information and advice, and permission to use photographs and diagrams. I especially thank:

Zhu Yi, Xu Fongjian, China National Committee for COSPAR, Beijing Guo Jiong, Gu Yidong, China Manned Spaceflight Engineering Wu Yunzhao, School of Geographic & Oceanographic Science, Nanjing University

Ling Zongcheng, National Astronomical Observatories, China Academy of Sciences

Chen Shengbo, Jilin University, Changchun Yu Yang, Tsinghua University Wang Lina, Beijing University

Lu Yangxiaoyi, Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow

Cindy Liu, Dublin Institute of Technology

Aaron Janofsky, COSPAR, Paris

Gabriela Nasciemento, INPE, Brazil

Patricia Leite, Assistant to the Director, INPE, Brazil

Suszann Parry, Mary Todd, Ben Jones, British Interplanetary Society, London

Paolo UUvi, Italy

Theo Pirard, Belgium

Dave Shayler, England

Phil Clark, Hastings, England

Pat Norris, England

Karl Bergquist, European Space Agency

Susan McKenna-Lawlor, Space Technologies Ireland

Dominic Phelan, Ireland

I am grateful to them all. For assistance with photographs, I thank those above and also Mark Wade, Hang Heng Rong, Zhang Nan, Thierry Legault, and Clare Hindson of Press Association. Other photos come from the author’s collection and from the previous editions, to whom I renew my appreciation.

Brian Harvey Dublin, Ireland, 2012

About the Author

Brian Harvey is a writer and broadcaster on spaceflight who Uves in Dublin, Ireland. He has a degree in history and political science from Dublin University (Trinity College) and an MA from University College Dublin. His first book was Race into Space: The Soviet Space Programme (Ellis Horwood, 1988), followed by further books on the Russian, Chinese, European, Indian, and Japanese space programs. His books and book chapters have been translated into Russian, Chinese, and Korean.

Jiuquan launch site is located in the Gobi Desert in north-west China. It is the home of the Long March 2 rocket. The launch site is 90 km north-east of the oasis city of Jiuquan, which marks the end of the forts of the Great Wall and is now a tourist destination. Jiuquan is a modern, well-equipped, prosperous city, laid out in a grid, softened by windbreaks and tree-planting campaigns, now featuring a luxury hotel.

Getting from Jiuquan city to the launch site is a 90-min train journey through desert featuring bushes and small trees. The environment is similar to Russia’s Baikonour launch site in Kazakhstan and, indeed, the long, winding trade route known as the Silk Road passes near both. Storms whip up the desert sands from time to time. Being desert, the average rainfall is very small – only 44 mm annually. A river runs through the site, though it normally dries out in the summer. This is a place of extremes. Temperatures range from -34°C in December to + 42.8°C in July. Averages are kinder: from -11 °С in January to +26.5°C in July. The winter nights are bitterly cold, down to -30°C, but the skies are brilliantly clear. It is cold to work in Jiuquan in mid-winter and personnel there receive a subsidy for their winter clothing. The thin soil is a light, dusty brown shale. There are few bushes there, only brown camelthom and a few wild animals, mainly yellow goats and wild deer. Later, some elms and red willows were planted. Not far from the launch site, Mongolian

The original map of Jiuquan compiled by American intelligence. Then it was given the name of Shuang Cheng Tzu. Notice the protective surface-to-air missile sites.

herdsmen may be seen from time to time minding their sheep. Camels wander past periodically.

Like Baikonour, there are two parts to Jiuquan launch center: the cosmodrome and the town, about 20 min apart by car. The cosmodrome is a closed area covering 5,000 km2, bordered by a rim of desert mountains, visited by foreigners only when involved in particular missions. Like Baikonour, the facilities are quite spread out, connected by railways and roads. At one point, sand dunes encroach onto the railway; a detachment of soldiers is assigned nearby, their principal job being to clear the dunes when they drift onto the track. The town is laid out in a grid and is equipped with a railway station from Jiuquan city, coal-powered power plant, reservoir, stadium, hotel, and even a karaoke club. It is divided into four areas: military, commercial, residential, and technical. Staff at Jiuquan must, to a certain extent, learn to be self-reliant. Some of them keep pigs. The reservoir for the launch

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Expansion of Jiuquan, as recorded by American intelligence.

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Map of Jiuquan now, with the new construction after 1992. Courtesy: Mark Wade.

site, which is replenished during the rainy season, is used for breeding fish. Air conditions there can be extraordinarily clear: one observer brought out his particle detector at the launch site and found that the level of particles was one in a million – the standard of clean room conditions! We have only limited accounts of Jiuquan in its early days and did not get significant details until Swedish satellite engineers visited in the 1990s [4].

The original base was formally delimited as a 2,800-km2 military area in 1962. The site dates to its days as a missile base in the early 1960s, with two subsequent waves of expansion, the first in the 1970s for the first Earth satellite and the second in the 1990s for the manned space program. The original part is called the north site and comprises two pads (one sub-divisible into a second), simple concrete constructions, 60 x 60 m, with an underground control bunker with a periscope. For launches, rockets are brought to the pad on a 55-m-tall, 1,400-tonne moveable service gantry running on 17-m-wide rails. The rocket is then brought to a massive 11-floor umbilical tower with supporting arms which provides fuel, gas, and electricity right up to the final moments of the countdown.

Adjacent to the pads are the Huxi Xincun range control center, assembly buildings, blockhouses, and electricity station. The main processing building is 140 m long; it has an area of 4,587 m2 with a 90 x 8-m assembly hall and a 24 x 8-m

The original pad, Jiuquan, used from Dong Fang Hong onward.

fuelling hall. Equipment can be moved around by a crane able to lift 16 tonnes. Adjacent are 25 test rooms for checking out parts of a spacecraft. Beside them are a solid-rocket motor checkout and processing hall, 24 x 12 m, with crane, storage, and test facilities. The halls guarantee clean room standards of 100,000 class (one dust particle in 100,000 or less), temperatures of 20.5°C, and humidity in the 35-55% range.

Fuels are stored in underground bunkers. There are barracks for the militia who assist in the launchings and four-storey apartment blocks for workers involved in the maintenance of the site. Willow and white poplar trees are planted around the buildings and walkways to provide windbreaks and color. Launches from Jiuquan curve over to the south-east and visitors can watch launches from an observation site 4 km to the east of the pad, ringed by distant mountains. Sven Grahn, the first Western visitor to see a Chinese launch, recalled: “… tables and chairs were arranged directly on the sand and there were loudspeakers on telephone poles to relay the countdown in Chinese. Commands to personnel around the pad were given

by whistles and flags.” The main forms of surface transportation were steam trains and military trucks.

The second substantial expansion in the 1990s saw construction of a vertical vehicle assembly building and a new steel launch tower. The south site comprises:

• technical center – Vehicle Processing Building, transit building, non­hazardous operations building, hazardous operations building, solid-rocket motor building;

• crawler and paved road to the pad;

• two new launch pads;

• umbilical tower;

• launch control center.

Traditionally, Chinese rockets were assembled on the ground in a horizontal position, towed to the pad by tractor, and then reassembled vertically on the pad by cranes. Now, with the Vehicle Processing Building, it is possible to do all the assembly vertically indoors and roll out a ready-to-go rocket to the pad, with fuelling the major task remaining before countdown. At the new pad, the turnaround period is three days, which means that a new rocket could be ready for a mission within 72 hr of the previous launching.

The Vehicle Processing Building is the equivalent of – and looks like – the famous Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral and is constructed from reinforced concrete. It is 92 m high, 27 m wide, and 28 m long, with a 13-floor platform, cranes able to lift 17, 30, and 50 tonnes, with two high bays and two vertical processing halls, and is thereby able to prepare two launches at a time. Engineers can access a rocket from nine different levels. The door of the building is 74 m tall, 8 m wide at the top, and 14 m wide at the bottom, and weighs 350 tonnes, made up of six 20- tonne sections. The building dominates the surrounding desert landscape and can be seen 20 km away.

Adjacent are the horizontal transit building, 78 m long by 24 m, class 10,000 (not more than one particle of dust in 10,000 cm3) with air ducts to blow dust away, used to test out the launch vehicle, transit room, non-hazardous operations building for spacecraft checking in clean room conditions, and a hazardous operations building where fuels are loaded before launch. Shenzhou is held in a 12-m-tall scaffold before being lifted by a 15-tonne crane to the top of its rocket. The preparation hall has motivational gold slogans printed on a red background.

Linked by fiber optic cable 7 km from the Vehicle Processing Building is the 400 m2 launch control center, equipped with a main control room with four rows of work stations and two smaller control facilities, facing the launch pad 1,500 m distant. The normal criteria for launch are temperatures of-10°C to +40°C, winds of less than 10 m/sec, visibility of 20 km, and no lightning or thunder within 40 km.

To get to the pad 1,490 m distant, the assembled Long March 2F travels on a crawler 24 m long, 21 m wide, 8 m high, weighing 750 tonnes, and able to travel at 1.02 km/hr. Powered by eight electric motors and traveling at 20 cm/sec, it takes the crawler 40 min to travel from the Vehicle Processing Building to the launch pad. There, the launcher and spacecraft are grappled by the umbilical tower, an 11-floor fixed steel structure 75 m tall, with floors for fuelling, electrical connections, fire­fighting equipment, and an elevator. Underneath is an underground equipment room. There is a lightning conductor, flame trench, and a steel pipe down which astronauts may slide in 60 sec in an emergency evacuation to a protected bunker.

A second pad branches just off to the left. It was first used only weeks after the first manned mission when a Long March 2D put into orbit the FSW 3-1 recoverable satellite. The FSW was brought down to the pad by a new, 91-m-tall launch tower used to test, integrate, and fuel the assembled complex, equipped with no fewer than 40 testing workshops. When images of a second, close-by pad were spotted by satellite in the 1990s, observers realized that the Chinese could only have one capability in mind: to launch a space station first and then a manned spacecraft in quick succession thereafter.

Jiuquan has progressed from being a secret, off-map facility in the 1960s. Scientists were admitted in connection with satellite launchings in the 1990s and the media in the 2000s to follow the Shenzhou missions. Jiuquan city is on the tourist map, its main hotel has Shenzhou memorabilia, and the cosmodrome’s existence is at last acknowledged (photo).

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.