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PURPOSE
What is China’s philosophy of space exploration? China’s space goals have been articulated over the years in a series of government economic, defense, and planning statements, documents, and policy papers. Highly political, indeed polemical, language in the 1970s gave way to much more pragmatic statements using frameworks and approaches familiar to students of government and public administration worldwide. Policy statements have attracted particular interest in the United States, where there has been a high level of concern that military and even mahgn objectives have been embedded within the program.
Traditionally, space policy was found within broader plans for economic and scientific development, such as the five-year plans adopted from 1949 onwards and longer-term development plans. For example, spaceflight was an important component of project 863 and was a prominent element within the 1996 National Long and Medium-Term Program for Science and Technology Development, 20002020, which included comsats, metsats, satellites for remote sensing, and other applications, providing international launcher services at competitive prices and a new launcher capable of putting 20 tonnes into orbit. It is also fair to say that, as is the case in other countries, the space program has an important national promotional objective, with one white paper referring to its value in inspiring “lofty thoughts”, and presidents such as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao have often visited and been pictured at its key events – a feature likely to continue with incoming president Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang.
It was not until 2000 that spaceflight development became subject to a national policy statement in its own right, with the publication on 22nd November that year of a dedicated China white paper on its future space program, given the short title of Modernization. Readers expecting a listing of future launch schedules, dramatic reorganization, or announcements of exciting new projects will have been disappointed. Like most government white papers the whole world over, the language was bureaucratic, the aspirations general, and some of the statements quite bland. Positively, the 13-page white paper was economical in the use of language, logical in its presentation, short, and clear. Political sloganeering and point scoring were completely absent and there was no reference to the American embargoes or issues that arose from the Cox report. Like most white papers universally, the real value was in reading between the lines and in scanning the paper for nuances of ideas in train, projects hinted, and new priorities articulated.
First, the white paper recited China’s space achievements, articulated overarching aims, and listed broad lines of development. The paper recalled how China had to struggle against “weak infrastructure” and a “relatively backward level of science and technology”. The three broad aims of the space program were exploration, applications, and the promotion of economic development. Space development was set in its broader political context and linked to economic progress, environmental protection, and international cooperation. Internationally, China would make a point of working closely with the other countries of the Asia-Pacific region.
Second, in designing its space policy, China proposed to select a small number of key areas of development and concentrate on them, rather than try to do everything. China would build on its best abilities and concentrate on a limited number of areas and targets according to its strengths. China would combine selfreliance with international cooperation. The short-term priorities of the space program were:
• Earth observation of the land, atmosphere, and oceans;
• weather forecasting;
• independently operated communications and broadcasting systems with long operating lives, high capacity, and reliability;
• independent satelhte navigation system.
Third, the long-term priorities of the space program were to:
• achieve manned spaceflight;
• “Obtain a more important place in the world in space science”;
• upgrade existing rockets and introduce the next generation of new, low-cost, non-polluting, high-performance rockets;
• develop a national system of remote sensing, ensuring the effective distribution of data throughout the country;
• fly a new generation of satellites for microgravity, materials science, life sciences, space environment, astronomy;
• make pre-studies for exploration of deep space, centering on the Moon.
The white paper articulated a number of what it called “development concepts” to guide the space program over the next number of years. These were:
• space industry organizations were encouraged to market their products as widely as possible, domestically and internationally;
• resources would be available for tackling key, core technological problems;
• recruitment of talented people to the space industry would be encouraged; the aim was to build a contingent of young, highly qualified scientists and engineers;
• the program would continue to emphasize quality control, risk reduction, and skilled management.
The white paper had few surprises, but confirmed the impression of a space program that would concentrate on some key areas in a systematic way. The emphasis on manned flight and a new fleet of launchers was confirmed, although there was no specific mention of a space station. There was a renewed commitment to space applications and space science. Missions to the Moon were, at that time, still something to study rather than to do. Symptomatic of the long-range thinking was the commitment to improve human resources and to address key technological problems.
The second white paper {Acceleration, 2006) emphasized the role of the space program in supporting the economy, indigenous innovation, the quality of science, China’s interests and rights, national strength, and exploration. A key phrase, reiterating an earlier theme, was “China will focus on certain areas while ignoring less important ones. It will choose some limited targets, concentrate its strength on making key breakthroughs and realize leapfrogging development”. The new paper included the commitment to a space walk, rendezvous, and docking; a space laboratory; the forthcoming Moon probe; the development of the Beidou network of navigation satellites; the development of direct broadcast communications satellites;
and a new type of recoverable satellite. The key new phrase, though, was “leapfrogging development”: key areas to make “substantial, overtaking moves” ahead. Substantial investment in infrastructure was promised.
The third white paper, Full Speed Ahead, was published on 29th December 2011. Its principal commitments were listed as:
• completion of the Long March 5 by 2014, aiming to achieve 40% more thrust than the Ariane 5 and matching the American Delta IV; building the Long March 6 and 7;
• construction of the new Hainan space port;
• completion of the Beidou system by 2020, development of advanced remote sensing, and preparation of the Dong Fang Hong 5 series;
• medium-length spaceflight (weeks, rather than months); preparation of the space station;
• preparation of rover and sample return missions, with pre-research on a heavy launch vehicle for a manned lunar landing;
• debris mitigation.
Between the three white papers – Modernization, Acceleration, and Full Speed Ahead – the methodical picking-up of both the scope and pace of the program was readily apparent [2]. The third white paper should also be seen in the context of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, 2008-2013 in the section “Space Science Development”. This plan was especially interesting in affirming an investment in space science, hitherto a relatively low priority in the program. Space science was divided into headings: space astronomy and solar physics; solar system exploration; microgravity science and life sciences. Specific missions were identified as a priority, such as the manned and lunar program, the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), Shi Jian 10, Yinghuo, the later-cancelled Small Explorer for Solar Eruptions (SMESE), and the Space Solar Telescope (SST) (see Chapter 7). The plan was divided according to “scientific tasks and problems” and “main tasks”, as shown in Table 10.6. This plan was important, not so much for its detail, but as an attempt to re-estabhsh space science as a priority within the program as a whole.
Interpreting long-term Chinese aims in space has proved to be a difficult exercise. Writers such as Johnson-Freese, Handberg and Li, Kulacki and Lewis, Jones, Oberg, Clark, Sourbes-Verger, Seedhouse, Lardier, and Pirard have worked hard to promote our understanding and disentangle the various drivers of the Chinese space program, such as national ambition, technology and innovation, military, science, and historical imperatives [3]. Some press commentaries have suffered from negative value-driven judgments on China’s political system and its alleged military and territorial ambitions. Popular media have tended to portray China as being in a “race” with the United States and the idea of a contest undoubtedly attracts readers. At a time when India, Japan, and China all launched Moon probes within a few months of each other, the idea of a “race” was especially irresistible (see, e. g. Morris Jones, The New Moon Race, 2009, Rosenberg, Kenthurst, New South Wales, Australia). Kulacki and Lewis, in their interpretation of Chinese space ambitions, A Place for One’s Mat (2009, American Academy of Arts and Sciences), took a fresh
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Table 10.6. Problems, objectives, and tasks of the 11th five-year plan.
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approach and emphasized that China has sought a recognized role in space exploration – respect and equality – rather than to “win”. They took the trouble of exploring and explaining the language of the Chinese space program, using original sources from China itself. A typical phrase they encountered was yi xi zhi di, “a place for one’s mat”, equivalent to the English “a seat at the table” (in traditional China, one sat on mats on the floor). They drew attention to a second narrative that China, originally the world leader in science, had, over centuries, lost that pre-eminence to Europe and “the West” – a reputation that should be recovered. Here, spaceflight achievement was probably the most recognized metric of scientific capability. Their conclusions were that China sought membership in the world space community, but neither competition with it nor isolation from it.
Many Western commentaries allege that the military, particularly the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), run the Chinese space program: indeed, a recent report to the United States Congress flatly affirmed that “The PLA dominates China’s space activities” [4]. This is true insofar as key facilities in launching and tracking are managed and staffed by the military, much as was the case in Russia until recently (indeed, the US Navy was the primary agency retrieving American astronauts from the oceans). This affirmation greatly overstates its role, for decisions are made by party and government, with the various agencies responsible reporting to them. The prolonged decisions around the first satellite, the communications satellite, and then the manned program showed that, rather like the Soviet Union, there were a variety of actors (party, government, engineers, scientists), but the military, although present, play a minor role. It is true that the Chinese military have made no secret of their wish to use space for military purposes – in 2005, Major General Chang Xianqi wrote a text on the topic, Military Astronautics – but not in such a way as to mark China as substantially different in its approach from Russia or the United States. While China’s military program is clearly an important part of the space program – a fifth of satelhtes launched – it is not overwhelming.
Perhaps one of the most important indicators as to how the space program fits in with long-term thinking is the China Academy of Sciences’ Science and Technology in China – A Roadmap to 2050: Strategic General Report of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published in 2009 (edited by Lu Yongxian). This was a monumental report covering energy, information technology, synthetic biology, brain function, ecological agriculture, predictive health, security, and genetics. At a time when the Western economies of Europe and the United States were convulsed by financial crises, China was thinking ahead to its economic future over the following 40 years and the time when its population would rise to 1.5bn. The main report had, as a starting point, the failure of China to take advantage of past opportunities – a mistake it was not going to make again. Previously, China “fell from a world economic power into a poverty-stricken country, subject to insult and humiliation by other powers”. Science and technology offered a way forward – one that China had both the vision and the funding to lead, in a process called “the Great Rejuvenation”. The report singled out 22 technology areas for development, such as photosynthesis, geothermal energy, nanotechnology, regenerative medicine, synthetic biology, and mathematics. The general report was the outcome of 18 separate working groups examining how China would tackle diverse fields of technology, of which space science was one. The Roadmap promised that China would become the world leader in science, just as Europe was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the United States was in the twentieth. By mid-century, China aimed to publish more scientific papers and create more inventions than any other country. As Yang Zhijun put it: “We are past the stage of ‘Made in China’. From now one, we want the stamp ‘Invented in China’.” The Roadmap is a fundamental, ground-breaking report – one which went unremarked upon by Western countries and media. A noted exception was Theo Pirard: “The message to the world is clear: start getting used to mandarin and Chinese characters” [5].
The separate space science report, called Space Science and Technology in China – A Roadmap to 2050 (edited by Guo Huadong and Wu Ji), was the outcome of a working group of 40 specialists, institutes, study bodies, and space centers. It spoke of making China, by 2050, a moderately developed, largely modernized country and a leader in modernization. The critical tone of the Roadmap is remarkable, repeatedly emphasizing the gap between China and other countries, accompanied by a spirit of urgency and ambition. The space science proposals were broken down into three timelines: immediate (to 2020), medium-term (2030), and
long-term (2050). The Roadmap had three strategic goals: space science, space applications, and space technology. The space science goals were focused on the origins and evolution of the universe, life, the Sun-Earth system, fundamental physics, and the laws of motion. Space apphcations goals were focused on climate change, ecology, energy, and water. Space technology goals were focused on what were identified as “technical bottleneck problems” such as high-resolution observations, navigation, miniaturization and nano-technology, intelligentization, inter-satellite communications, drag-free control, ultra-high-speed flight, and a permanent human presence in space.
Roadmap to 2050 set important targets to address these bottlenecks. For example, targets for communications were 25 Gbps by 2020, 40 Gbps by 2030, and 100 Gbps by 2050 using lasers and quantum communications, cryptography, and key distribution. Navigation targets for autonomous positioning accuracy on deep- space missions were 100 m by 2015 and 30 m by 2025. New propulsion technologies were selected for development, while power supply development was planned in radio-isotope thermo-electric generators, fuel cells, and solar power. Some of the technologies to be developed are quite exotic, such as maser fountain clocks from 2023 and systems to test theories of gravity, relativity, and the equivalence principle from 2025. In the next stage, experiments in fundamental physics are planned in the areas of gravitational wave detection, quantum information and the transportation of cryptographic keys, and the detection of dark energy and cosmic neutrinos.
Under science, seven lines of development were proposed:
1. The high-energy universe, black matter, stellar oscillations, using telescopes on Chinese space stations;
2. The search for life on other planets, with the mastery of life-support systems to make possible bases on the Moon and Mars;
3. Solar terrestrial relations, with high-resolution telescopes to study the Sun, a solar probe, and the SST in 2015;
4. Following the heliosphere in three dimensions, with the Kuafu mission (probes at LI, L2, and polar orbit) and the SPORT mission over the solar poles; automatic platforms on the lunar surface;
5. Solar system missions to find life;
6. Research with atomic clocks to explore the theory of relativity;
7. Manned flights with experiments in weightlessness on materials and fluids.
In applications, the Roadmap envisaged China developing an infrastructure for Earth observation of global changes in the environment. The objective was a high – resolution Earth observation system by 2020, with groups of small satellites for three-dimensional mapping of weather, the oceans, resources, and the environment, using a combination of small, polar-orbiting, and geosynchronous satellites. It would use three ground stations in Beijing (Miyun), Xinjian (Kashi), and Hainan (Sanya), to be followed by two more stations in China, a ground station in Brazil, and one at the pole.
In technology development, the Roadmap set out seven further areas of development:
1. High-precision observation instruments, such as telescopes of 2 m (2025) and 4 m (2035) with an interferometric telescope (2035), with the development of radars, lidars, and sub-millimeter bands;
2. Development of high-resolution and high-precision (0.01”) instruments across the spectrum, with the associated cryogenic technology;
3. Timing instruments for global positioning, fundamental physics, and the gravitational field;
4. Laser communications for sky-to-ground and inter-satelhte communications at the rate of 100 Gps by 2050, as well as Quantum Information Science & Technology (QIST) and the TerraHertz band;
5. Balloons and sounding rockets, both as technological demonstrators and for environmental studies;
6. Mastery of new navigation systems, propulsion, on-orbit autonomy, as well as advanced propulsion systems (e. g. electric, nuclear, solar wind, radio isotopes, photocatalytic fuel production, antimatter);
7. Development of life-support systems for ever more complex manned spaceflight. China would develop Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS) so as to make long space missions self-sustaining. They would be commenced by 2030 so as to make possible the building of the lunar base and China aimed to be a world leader in such systems.
The Roadmap was precise in identifying a number of areas in which China was still very much at the starting post. Autonomous deep-space navigation systems, for example, had first flown on Soviet probes to Mars as far back as 1971, but were not even in the development phase yet in China, so there was much to be done. The Roadmap included a mission timehne (Table 10.7).
A striking feature of the Roadmap, following the 2008-13 five-year plan, is the emphasis on space science. According to the Roadmap, China’s record in space science did not match China’s status as an emerging space power. Although China had invested ¥900m over 1996-2005, China’s contribution to scientific papers worldwide was “a very small portion”. Space telescope technology “lags far behind the international level”. The aim of China’s space science program was to tackle cutting-edge questions, address the questions of basic science, and make original contributions and decisive breakthroughs. One of these was dark matter. According to Zhang Shuang-Nan of the Institute of High Energy Physics, the objective of China’s astrophysics program was to study the universe from its origins through its cycles of matter (e. g. supernova, stars) to its end processes (white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes), with a particular interest in dark matter: “At this stage,” he said, “we can explain only 4% of the universe. Dark energy dominates the universe, 73% of it and dark matter 23%. There has been an explosion of interest in dark matter. Not a single scientific paper was published on it in 1998, but by 2008 there were 600 – and we still don’t know!”
So far, he said, China had only a modest space astronomy space program, but this would change. To make a start, a dark matter annihilation detection satellite of 1,200-kg payload would be launched in 2015 into an orbit of 500-600 km. Its
2012 Chang e 3 lander/rover
2014 Chang e 4 lander/rover Kuafu
POLAR on Tiangong 2 HXMT
2015 Mars orbiter via asteroids Chang e 5 sample return Space Solar Telescope
Dark Matter Detection Satellite 2018 Chang e 6 sample return MIT
2020 Optimized Solar Maximum Mission
X-ray Timing and Polarization Satellite (XTP)
Large space station, “cosmic lighthouse” dark matter detection experiment 2025 Mars lander
Cold atomic clock
SPORT Solar Polar Orbit Radio Telescope 2030 Manned lunar landing, lunar physics laboratory Global Solar Exploration 2033 Mars sample return mission
2035 First mission through the asteroids to the outer planets Space Optic Interference Telescope 2040 Lunar base
Lunar Astronomical Observatory 2050 Mars landing
purpose was to make highly sensitive detections of high-energy electrons and gamma rays, separating the signatures of annihilation from known electron and gamma-ray processes using scintillators covering the energy range 5 GeV to 10 TeV. Indeed, China’s ambitious astrophysics program contrasted with a likely gap in Western missions, to the point that some experts had penned, in Science, an article entitled “A Dark Age for Space Astronomy?” [6].
The astronomy and astrophysics part of the Roadmap was divided into six programs:
• Black Hole Program (ВНР);
• Diagnostics of Astro-Oscillations Program (DAO);
• Portraits of Astrophysical Objects Program (РАО);
• Dark Matter Detection Program (DMD);
• Solar Microscope Program (SMP);
• Solar Panorama Program (SP).
Some of these missions have already been described in Chapter 1 (the cosmic lighthouse) and Chapter 7 (space science missions). The other missions newly proposed in the Roadmap are covered here, starting with solar missions.
SPORT will travel for four years to enter a Ulysses-type polar orbit between 0.5 and 1 AU around the Sun in time for its next solar maximum and form a space – based weather monitoring system (Meridian II). It will comprise a mother spacecraft and no fewer than eight subsatellites which will be deployed over the solar north pole. To reach the Sun, two similar possible trajectories using low-thrust gravity assist via Jupiter have been calculated. It will make three-dimensional observations, study the connection of the Sun with the interplanetary medium, provide a plasma cloud map as early warning to the Earth, and watch for interplanetary coronal mass ejections (CMEs), especially CME ejections from out of the ecliptic. SPORT’s scientific objectives are to:
• image high-density plasma clouds from solar polar orbit;
• provide a solar weather-forecasting service;
• measure the solar wind in situ;
• discover the heating and acceleration of the solar wind;
• measure the output of solar energy.
Payloads will include a radio high-frequency microwave imager and an extreme ultraviolet imager [7]. For later solar observations, the Meridian network (Chapter 7) will be extended to the Moon, with a space physics observation platform on the lunar surface to monitor the Sun, the Earth, the solar wind, and the magneto tail, while another solar observatory will be established at LI, using solar sail technology.
This will be followed by three further missions. The Optimized Solar Maximum Mission comprised three elements: Solar Radio Array At extremely Low Frequency (SRALF), to study the solar wind; Solar Explorer for High Energy and Far Infrared radiation (SEHEFI), to observe sudden releases from the Sun; and the Super High Angular Resolution Principle X-ray Telescope (SHARP-X) to observe x-rays at high resolution. Global Solar Exploration is a spacecraft with a full set of multi-waveband instruments to study the Sun at a close distance. The Space Optic Interferometric Telescope would observe the solar photosphere with a resolution of 0.01°.
Examining further astrophysical missions, POLAR is a gamma burst polarization experiment with Switzerland, France, and Poland to survey half the sky in 2014 from the Tiangong 2 space laboratory. Its aim is to measure gamma-ray bursts from 30 to 350 keV. The instrument is a stack of plastic scintillators with a weight of 30 kg. The plan is to make a statistically precise sample of gamma-ray bursts and jets so as to prompt an understanding of what drives them. It will be located mid-way along Tiangong’s exterior. This will be followed by the Space Variable Object Matter (SVOM), now approved and to be developed with France with a 2015-20 launch date. It has the objectives of detecting and locating gamma-ray bursts, measuring the spectral shape of their emissions, determining their temporal qualities, and identifying and measuring afterglows, with the following instruments:
• ECLAR, a wide-field telescope to locate gamma-ray bursts in the hard x-ray and soft gamma-ray band (4-250 keV);
• GRM, a spectrophotometer to monitor gamma-ray bursts (50 keV-5 MeV);
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Preparations for the SVOM mission with France are already under way. Courtesy: CNES. |
• MXT, a telescope to study afterglow; and
• VT, a 45-cm telescope for the visible afterglow of gamma-ray bursts.
For stellar observations, two missions are planned: an X-ray Timing and Polar Satellite (XTP) and a Gravity Wave Telescope, in 2030 (details of this are not yet available). The XTP will, from 2020, study the light curve and neutron stars. The purpose is to explore black holes and neutron stars in the range of 1-30 keV. So far, a €lm feasibility study has been carried out. The following instruments are envisaged:
• high-energy x-ray collimated array (5-30 keV);
• low-energy collimated array (1-10 keV);
• high-energy x-ray focused array (1-30 keV);
• low energy x-ray focused array (1-10 keV);
• all-sky monitor (2-30 keY);
• polarization observation telescope (1-15 keV).
Astronomy was not the only proposed field of space science. The Roadmap set out an agenda for microgravity research, especially in the areas of fluid physics, combustion, non-metallic materials, smoldering, thermal fluid management, heat and mass transfer, evaporation, condensation, granular systems, metal foams, smelting, materials science, and crystallization.
Such are some of the ambitious missions sketched by the Roadmap. They presupposed a much improved launcher capability and this is discussed next.