CONCLUSIONS: FSW – AN EVOLVED ROLE

The FSW series evolved through three phases. It was originally intended to test a recoverable system and as a precursor for manned spaceflight (see Chapter 8). When the early manned program was cancelled, it was used for Earth observations, military and civilian, although only limited civilian results were published and none military. The photographic role continued to the end, when it was divided along Soviet lines of close-look and area surveys. From 1987, the program developed a third role, in biological, life sciences, and materials processing experiments of ever greater sophistication, using improved and more versatile designs, the most recent exemplar being Shi Jian 8, with a successor, Shi Jian 10, still to come. In the end, it turned into a multi-purpose program of military and civil photography and scientific and applications experiments. The only other country with a similar capacity in recoverable cabins was Russia, with its Bion and Foton series. The series is summarized in Table 4.2.

Some Western experts have taken the view that FSW was primarily a military photo-reconnaissance series, imaging the Earth with film recovered from the landed cabin, like the Russian Zenit and Yantar series. The other experiments were, in effect, add-ons to take advantage of spare cabin space. There is strong evidence to support the military photographic role in the use, by the Chinese, of Jian Bing designators which are suggestive of a military purpose. Phil Clark, the British expert who analyzed the behavior, orbital patterns, and maneuvers of Soviet photo­reconnaissance satellites, noticed a similar pattern of area-survey and close-look missions in the FSW series. What appears to be the end of FSW series coincides with the start of the Yaogan program (Chapter 6), which appears to have the capacity for digital imaging, making the film-recovery system of FSW outdated. Concluding the chapter, Table 4.3 is a technical summary of the FSW series under its Jian Bing designators.