China is soliciting international participation in its future manned space station in the form of foreign modules that would attach to the three-module core system, visits by foreign crew-transport vehicles for short stays and the involvement of non-Chinese researchers in placing experiments on the complex, the chief designer of China’s manned space program said Oct. 12.
But he declined to commit to an international orbital docking technology that would facilitate international participation in the Chinese facility.
The Chinese orbital station, consisting of a core module and two experiment-carrying modules, can be expanded to a total of six modules if international partners want to invest in their own components, said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the China Manned Space Program at the China Manned Space Agency.
Addressing the 66th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) here, Zhou said the station will have a nominal crew of three, with a maximum capacity of six, with three-member crews being launched aboard Chinese Long March 2F rockets from the Jiuquan spaceport for missions of up to six months.
China has signed initial space station cooperation agreements with the Russian and European space agencies, and while the European Space Agency has begun training astronauts in Chinese, there is no specific plan yet to send astronauts to the Chinese facility.
The core module of the Chinese station is scheduled for launch in 2018, Zhou said. Crew-carrying Chinese capsules will visit the module before the two experiment modules are added to complete the initial station design.
“Work is well under way,” said Zhou, whose education includes time at the University of Southern California. “All the modules and associated vehicles are under development.”
If the current schedule holds – he gave no indication of any financing or technical roadblocks – the station would be ready for full operations “around 2022,” he said. One of the interesting features of the Chinese space station is that it will be served from two of China’s four spaceports.
The cargo modules will be launched aboard Chinese 5B rockets from the Hainan spaceport in southern China, at 19 degrees north latitude. Pressurized and unpressurized cargo will be launched aboard Long March 7 rockets, also from Hainan.
But China’s Shenzhou crew-transport vehicle is launched from the Jiuquan launch facility at 41 degrees north latitude, in the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia.
The station will operate for 10 years or more, at an altitude of 340-450 kilometers with an orbital inclination of 42-43 degrees relative to the equator.
The international space station managed by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, operates in low Earth orbit of around 400 kilometers in altitude, with an orbital inclination of 51.6 degrees, an accommodation to Russia, whose Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan is at 46 degrees north latitude.
Zhou said China plans to launch an astronomy telescope into an orbit near enough to the space station to dock to it for upgrades and servicing. He declined to specify the telescope’s size...
