SHENZHOU 3: THE LONG WAIT

The Chinese originally planned to follow Shenzhou 2 with their third launch in August 2001. In the event, the third mission did not fly for another seven months. The purpose of this mission was to fly a fully rated Shenzhou with a live escape system. The long delays in getting Shenzhou 3 airborne were an instructive example of the deliberative, cautious approach of the Chinese to their manned space program. More than ever, they were determined not to rush their fences and only fly once they were totally happy with their equipment. Shenzhou 3 was rolled out to the launch pad in Jiuquan in late July 2001 – something known from commercial imaging satellites. The Yuan Wang tracking ships soon set out to sea.

In the event, the launch crews were not happy with their checkout of the Long March 2F, especially the electrical connectors, and were unable to make the necessary modifications in situ. Product quality was at fault, indicated one report. The electrical problem must have been deep inside the rocket, because it was sent all the way back on the railway to Beijing on 12th October for modifications. There, 10 further defects were found and corrected. It was back in Jiuquan again by early November. The tracking fleet slipped out to sea again on 16th December for a 10- day rehearsal of its tracking routines in the East China Sea, handing control over from one ship to another. They had a tough time, for they were hit with 5-m-high waves, 60-km/hr winds, and the crews were badly seasick. A fresh attempt to count down the vehicle was made for an 8th January launch date. This time, the avionics were at fault. Internal systems had to be taken out and fully replaced, causing a further three-month delay. As they waited in the winter cold, Jiuquan was hit by some of the worst sandstorms for many years.

Shenzhou 3 was eventually launched at night on 25th March. Its pillar of flame lit up the gantry alongside and sent orange smoke spewing up the side of the site. The escape system was operated in live conditions for the first time. In 10 min, Shenzhou 3 had reached orbit, one slightly different, at 41.4° rather than 41.6°, with an altitude of 195-336 km, 89.84 min. Confirmation that orbit had been achieved was greeted with applause in mission control. Sometime between 7 hr and 9 hr 15 min after launch, Shenzhou maneuvered to its standard orbit of 335 km, 91.216 min – one which brought it exactly over Jiuquan every 31 circuits. This time, the launch was watched by the yuhangyuan squad. Their purpose was to test the procedures for leaving the cabin in an on-the-pad emergency. In the event of having to leave the cabin quickly, they would exit Shenzhou in 5 sec each, run to a tunnel, descend eight floors on a slide, and shelter in a bunker. Some of their personal souvenirs were flown on board.

Shenzhou 3 carried dummies (two or three, depending on one’s sources) with simulated blood pressure, pulses, and breathing. Voice recordings were transmitted to and from the cabin. The half-way point of the mission was signaled several days

later, indicating that the mission was not intended to be longer than the week of Shenzhou 2. More television pictures were relayed of the dummies in the cabin while another shot showed the Earth through the porthole.

On 29th March at 18:15 Beijing time (10:15 GMT) on the 61st orbit, the apogee was raised slightly while Shenzhou 3 was directly over the Yuan Wang 3 comship off Africa in an 8-sec burn to trim it for re-entry. The orbit was raised from 331-336 km, 91.2 min, to 335-342 km. A final trim took place on the 31st, adjusting the orbit from 330-337 km to 330-340 km. On the following day, 1st April, at 15:52, the orbital module was separated and retro-fire took place at 16:02 (Beijing time). Shenzhou crossed the equator for the last time at 16:14 at 34°E. In mission control in Beijing, the path of the incoming spaceship was marked up on the 48-m2 liquid crystal display screen. Twenty-nine-year-old mission controller Shen Jiansong called out each crucial stage as it happened, from retro-fire through to parachute deployment and then touchdown in Chinese Mongolia. Stormy applause broke out. The landing came at 16:51 after a 162-hr mission in which it had flown 108 times around the Earth, covering a distance of 5.4m km. It was an hour and a half before sunset.

In contrast to the previous mission, pictures of the Shenzhou 3 cabin were posted on the internet within minutes. A rescuer was pictured rushing forward towards the cabin, which had alighted on the grassy steppe brush, with a Mil-8 helicopter in the background. Late-afternoon sunlight flooded into the cabin as they opened the

hatches to take out the dummies. The Shenzhou 3 cabin was the first one to come down in daylight.

As was the case with the previous mission, the orbital module then began its own solo career, scheduled to last six months, starting a day later. It was flying over the Jiuquan launch site every 32 circuits and data were dumped to the ground during passes over China on S-band on 2,200-2,290 MHz at 10 МВ/sec. On 1st April, the day of the landing, its engines fired to raise its orbit to 354-257 km, 91.64 min. This path had decayed back to the original altitude by 24th April, so, early the following morning, a burn put the craft back up, this time to 382-388 km. This was a slightly lower altitude than its predecessor module. On 13th June, the orbit had decayed, so a maneuver by the engines raised the module’s orbit from 356-369 km, 91.79 min, to 375-385 km, 92.15 min. The last orbit-raising maneuver took place on 16th July. The orbital module eventually completed its mission on 10th October and decayed on 12th November off Western AustraUa. By then, it had circled the Earth 2,821 times on a 232-day independent mission.

It was announced that 44 experiments were on board, 13 in the descent cabin and 31 on the orbital module. The principal ones were a 34-band medium-resolution imaging spectrograph, cirrus cloud sensor, Earth radiation budget sensor, solar ultraviolet monitor, solar constant monitor, atmospheric composition detector, atmospheric density detector, multi-chamber crystallization furnace and protein crystal equipment (second flight), cell bioreactor, solid-matter tracking detector, and microgravity gauge (third flight). Dealing first with the experiments recovered on the descent module, it contained an experimental microchip, an incubator to hatch eggs, seeds, seedlings, a vaccine experiment, and eggs from Blacklion chickens to test embryo growth. The seeds were taken from plums, vines, and alfalfa. The seedlings project was masterminded by Academy of Sciences genetics professor Liu Min. It was the first time that China had orbited seedlings (as distinct from seeds). This time, grape, raspberry, and orchid had been chosen. On their return, they grew at five to seven times the normal rate, he reported. The grape seedlings would later be attached to adult grapevines. Thirty-eight varieties of seeds were supplied by the Tian Xiang Ecoagriculture Company in Sichuan, including rice, wheat, vegetables, and traditional medicinal herbs. Nine Blacklion chicken eggs flew aboard Shenzhou in an experiment developed by chicken researcher Yang Anning. Thirty days after their return to the Earth, the first three hatched out and the results were analyzed for programs to breed more successful chicken varieties. The descent cabin carried protein crystallization and space cell culture experiments.

Shenzhou 3 marked a significant advance in materials processing with a fluid experimental device to test protein crystal growth and the behavior of cells, cell fusion, and electrophoresis. There was an attempt to grow a gallium crystal for a diluted magnetic superconductor, but there was insufficient energy to melt the crystal sample. Sixteen proteins were crystallized in 60 wells, with four showing significant improvements in diffraction quality and higher signal-to-noise ratios: phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfotransferase, cy­tochrome b5, and anti-bacterial pepcide LC1 (a form of snake venom) [5].

Turning to the orbital module, Shenzhou 3 carried an Earth Environment

Fig. 1 Etch patterns near crucible edges on the (111) faces: (a) space; (b) ground

Crystals taken from Shenzhou 3 experiments (left) compared to the ground control sample (right). Courtesy: COSPAR China.

Monitoring Unit developed by microwave sensing expert Lu Daren in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics. It included the China Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer, C-MODIS, with 34 channels to observe the Earth in visible and infrared light with a resolution of 500 m and a swath of 560 km, providing data for a land, ocean, and atmospheric survey. The spectrometer was used to follow pollutants and chlorophyll in the sea, vegetation on land, desertification, and soil water content. Later, details were released of the hundreds of images collected by the spectrometer, including the sea around north China and forest fires in North America, as well as charts of atmospheric density and composition, the solar constant, and the Earth radiation budget. Atmospheric composition and solar constant charts were published. The atmospheric density meter on Shenzhou 3 recorded densities over half a year in the 330-410-km range. It was a quiet solar period, the most distinctive feature being higher daytime densities and lower night­time densities. The severe solar storms of 17th, 19th, and 22nd April were followed, with air density rising 60% about 6.5 hr after the solar wind reached the Earth. A Solar Irradiance Absolute Radiometer (SIAR) scanned the Sun from March to

September and measured the solar constant at around 1,365 Wm’2. There was a radiation experiment, in which an aluminum box was used to capture heavy ions [6].

American analysts later made a distinctly military interpretation of the payload, believing it was used for electronic intelligence. It is possible that the module carried both electronic direction finders to detect and localize radars while the 550-m aperture camera could be used for visual military observations. According to some analysts, the cabin included a suite of electronic intelligence devices extended from the solar panels, the 50-cm dipoles giving a 4.5-m-wide capability, able to detect radars and electronic devices in the range of 300-1,000 MHz [7].