FIRST SATELLITE: DONG FANG HONG

Encouraged by his success with the missile, Tsien Hsue Shen worked hard to revive the canceled satellite project. Following Yuri Gagarin’s flight around the Earth in April 1961, Tsien organized a series of symposia which discussed spaceflight and reported on the progress of other nations. The following year, he convened a 50- strong satellite design team under Zhu Yilin in the Shanghai Institute of Machine and Electrical Design (SIMED) and, in 1963, the Academy of Sciences formed a Commission on Interplanetary Flight. The following year, the Academy of Sciences in Beijing established a committee to investigate the desirability of a man-made satellite, which sat for a year. Proposals from Tsien and his colleague Zhao Jiuzhang to revive the satellite project circulated over 1964-65 through party, military, and government. The Academy of Sciences presented, in July 1965, a Proposal on the Plan and Program of Development Work of Our Artificial Satellite. Sensing a favorable wind, they proposed not just a satellite, but a space program. The satellite was approved by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and the central committee on 10th August 1965, stipulating that the satellite be visible from the ground and that its signals could be heard all over the world (similar considerations governed the approval of Sputnik) and it was given the new code of project 651.

In what became a standard Chinese practice, a lengthy design conference was held, lasting 42 days – from 20th October to 2nd December 1965 – and called the “651 conference”. This settled the details of the satellite, called the Dong Fang Hong 1 (“the east is red”), its weight (170 kg), orbit (70°, so that it could be widely seen), size (spherical polyhedron 1 m in diameter), brightness (fifth magnitude star), batteries (20-day supply), and scientific instruments. It was intended to be bigger, better, and more sophisticated than either Sputnik or America’s Explorer that opened the space age.

Building the launcher was a challenge at least as great as that of the satellite itself. The size and power of the Dong Feng rocket were far short of those required to reach orbit. Over the 1960s, the Chinese gradually developed the descendants of the

DF-1 to the point that the DF-4 could be developed into a satellite launcher. Called the Long March 1, it was essentially a three-stage version of the Dong Feng 4 medium-range missile developed over 1965-70 – a weapon planned to hit targets as far away as the mid-Pacific. On top of the DF-4, a small third-stage solid-rocket motor stage was fitted to get the satellite into orbit. The Long March 1 was 29.45 m long, 2.25 m in diameter, 79 tonnes in weight, and able to launch a satellite of 300 kg into an orbit of 440 km at 70°. The first two stages, 17 and 5 m tall, respectively, used storable fuels, UDMH (unsymetrical dimethyl methyl hydrazine), mixed with nitric acid – the approach favored by Russia’s greatest engine designer, Valentin Glushko. These fuels have the advantage of being powerful, storable on the pad for lengthy periods, and igniting on contact with one another, but the disadvantage of being toxic, requiring careful handling, and being capable of inflicting horrible burns in the case of accidents. The third stage, the GF-02, was a small engine using a solid – fuel motor and was 4 m tall and 0.77 m in diameter.

Once again, the project was overtaken by political events, for, in March 1966, Mao Zedong launched the cultural revolution. This had a profound effect, as the country was overrun by seething political factions and militants (the red guards).

Scientists involved in the project were dismissed, killed, sent for re-education in the countryside, forced to sign confessions (in­cluding Tsien), or driven to suicide (Zhao Jiuzhang). The red guards campaigned against project 651, publishing the slo­gan “when the satellite goes up, the red flag goes down”. Zhou Enlai eventually put the satelhte project under martial law and its scientists under military protec­tion in an attempt to save it from the worst of the excesses of the

revolution. When Zhou Enlai died several years later, person­nel in the space industry turned out in vast numbers to mourn him, placing wreaths and poems in his honor in Tiananmen Square, despite large-scale inti­midation by the red guards.

The Long March 1, used to launch China’s first satellite.

The scientists were not able to get the satellite and launcher ready until 24th April 1970. Tsien Hsue Shen and Zhou Enlai were in constant telephone contact between Jiuquan and Beijing as the countdown began that evening. The clouds parted to reveal stars winking in the darkness and China’s first Earth satellite ascended from Jiuquan on a 500-m orange tail of flame that bent over the desert of Gansu and headed towards the South China Sea. The first stage burned for 140 sec, dropping away so that the second could fire for 120 sec and, at the top of its trajectory, the small third-stage motor fired to kick it into orbit. As a tribute to the revolution, the scientific instruments had been removed, replaced by a tape recorder powered by a chemical battery playing the anthem “The East Is Red”. Tsien Hue Shen and his colleagues gathered on the still-hot launch pad, some cheering, some dancing, some even crying. Tsien made an impromptu speech. His life’s dream had at last come true in the deserts of north-west China.

Zhou Enlai personally insisted that a small note be added to the press communique: “We did it through our own unaided efforts.” This was true, for China was, at the time, isolated from much of the rest of the world in science, technology, and even in diplomacy. At 170 kg, it was indeed the biggest first satellite of any of the space powers. Parades were held all over the cities, towns, and villages of China and people vied with each other to be first to see the magnitude + 5 satellite or its + 3.3 rocket in the spring night skies. In Beijing, fireworks were set off, bands played, and colored banners were unfurled. On the Mayday parade in Tiananmen Square a week later, Tsien Hsue Shen stood on the podium along with other Chinese leaders as the band played the same tune as the first satellite was now broadcasting all over the world (signals lasted several weeks). The Dong Fang Hong rocket burned up on 29th December 2000, but the satellite is expected to stay aloft for 100 years, until 2070.