China's Space Program News Thread

[escobar]

If the following report is to be taken seriously, maybe the rocket will use Russian rocket engines as a way to go around the ban?
...
Russian Rocket Engine Delivery to China May Be Agreed by December
...

I find this information very disturbing. There is no indication of the engine type. The new rockets that we know china is developing are LM-9, LM6A/B/C/D and L-Naga and they will likely use YF series engine.
I wonder what will be the role of this russian engine supposing that the information is confirmed...

 

[escobar]

well, i just find this:

Spoiler: link

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RD-180 is something that I think china would love to get...

 

[no_name]

Maybe a new space shuttle should have an embedded capsule area that can be detached from the rest of the space craft if something goes wrong, and opt for a conventional re-entry.

It may not save the crew if something goes wrong during re-entry or launch, but could help if they found problems during the mission duration in space.

Then the rest of the shuttle can stay docked with the space station until they can send up repairs.

In fact space stations should have escape capsule attached to them so the people on them can get of in an emergency without the ground having to send up rescue missions.

Anyone know if the crew of Columbia could have enough fuel to transfer to the ISS and wait for repairs when they found out about insulation foams missing on the wings rather than force a re-entry?

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

@ escobar,

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The Russians have made a lot of Claims of the PRC buying things or wanting to buy things from them (See the SU35 Claims) Frankly It seems to a number of observers that the Russians are more trying to get the Chinese Interested but are hitting little interest. The PRC has it's own Road map and the Russians are trying to draw a detour.

@ Wolf,
part of the Defense of the ISS and other stations is there there placement by putting them in a clean orbit. most Debris is on a set orbit so as long as it's tracked properly then major impacts can he avoided.
The Key advantage of a station it's it's term of service. the Shuttle or capsule experiments have a limited life span this means that if it's a biological experiment like the effects of micro G on a human in long space trips with a shuttle you get weeks with a capsule days with a station well already have 14 months. If we want to go to Mars we need to know. And a Space station is the only real way. You can't go to Mars or beyond in a shuttle. Stations are scaled models of what is needed, however they are lacking the key feature needed to make such a trip really realistic a Centrifuge for artificial gravity this far the US, Russian and the PRC has shown no interest.

@ No Name,
Escape pods were conceptualized in both the American and Russian Orbiters but never really went into production due to budget.
Had NASA seriously believed that the Orbiter Columbia was in risk of being lost during reentry there was a options, The Colmbia had a extended mission package meaning the crew could have survived for some time in orbit.
However the Orbital inclination of Columbia was not in a position to allow docking with ISS or Soyuz. repair was Theoretically possible but considered a high risk.

 

[B.I.B.]

In another thread, mention was made of China's radio telescope FAST without too much elaboration. So I thought I would put some more info here.My apologies if Im duplicating something that has been posted earlier and Ill leave it up to the mods to delete it.

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"A massive engineering and scientific project in China is expected to take us one step closer in our quest to discover if we are truly alone in the universe.

The country's military-led space program is constructing the world's largest radio telescope, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, and Chinese state media recently released images of the amazing structure nearing completion.
The massive construction project -- when completed the dish itself will be the size of 30 football pitches -- has the potential to be a game-changer for our understanding of the universe, and our search for life on other planets.

When it is finished it will potentially be able to detect radio signals -- and potentially, signs of life -- from planets orbiting a million stars and solar systems.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency

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FAST will be completed in 2016 -- allowing researchers to detect radio signals from as far as tens of billions of light years away.

Nan Rendong, chief scientist of the FAST project, told Xinhua that the huge dish will enable much more accurate detection......................."


More Images

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[broadsword]

Here are more technical details.

Elsewhere in the internet says its resolution will not be as good or advanced as Very Large Base Array (VLBA) radio telescopes like the one in Chile.

..........................radio telescope with 3x the capabilities of the Arecibo Observatory in a remote part of the Guizhou province in southern China. Expected to take four years to build, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) will be the most advanced telescope of its kind.

FAST will contain a set of motors to change the shape of the dish’s reflective surface so it can scan large sections of the sky. Able to see 3x further into space than the Arecibo telescope, astronomers predict FAST will uncover new galaxies and deep-space objects of a distance of up to 7 billion light years away.

The key difference between the Arecibo telescope and FAST is that the Arecibo dish is fixed in a spherical curve that focuses incoming radio waves to a line above the dish. This line is focused to a point by secondary and tertiary mirrors that hang over the dish. Once in a point, the waves can be analyzed. This means that only 221 meters of the 305 meter dish are being used at a time.

Rather than focus incoming waves with overhead mirrors like the Arecibo dish, the FAST dish itself can focus the signal. The dish will be made of 4,400 triangular aluminium panels, which will be connected by nodes that can be moved up or down by a motorized system to change the shape of the dish’s surface. A subset of panels on the dish’s surface will be capable of moving to form a parabolic mirror 0f 300 meters (nearly the total size of the Arecibo dish). This sub-dish can assemble anywhere on the larger dish’s 500 meter surface, allowing FAST to track objects and study space from a significantly wider point of view.

FAST will also feature a receiver hanging above the main dish making it capable of studying 19 specific regions of the sky at the same time on different bands of the radio spectrum. This far exceeds the ability of the Arecibo dish which can only study seven regions of space at a time.

The Guizhou province location was selected based on the region’s karst depressions, or sinkholes that form from water eating away at the limestone bedrock. Researchers, led by Rendong Nan at the National Astronomical Observatories (NAO) in Beijing used satellite images and aerial surveys to analyze the landscape of the Guizhou province.

Ultimately the location chosen was a remote 800-meter-wide karst surrounded by mountains that should be far enough away from major population zones to be free from interfering radio signals. To mold the karst into the dish’s hemispherical shape, workers will have to remove a million cubic meters of soil. Construction on the project began in March 2011, and should be completed by September 2016.

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[siegecrossbow]

China's Mars lander mission is scheduled for 2020?

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[escobar]

NAGA-L...

payload capacity from JSLC

payload capacity from indenosia

payload capacity from sweden

payload capacity from tanzania
400km: 1545kg,
600km:1095kg,
800km: 595kg,
900km: 195kg

 

[escobar]

Tianhui-1C mapping sat launched...

 

[escobar]

China’s Long March 2D successfully launches Tianhui-1C Earth Observation Satellite

Spoiler: link

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China successfully launched a Long March 2D rocket on Monday, lifting the Tianhui-1C satellite to a Sun Synchronous Orbit. Liftoff from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center took place at 7:10 UTC and tracking data later revealed the satellite in an orbit of nearly 500 Kilometers. The Tianhui series of satellites uses stereo-imaging systems for the collection of topographic data.

The first Tianhui-1 satellite was launched in August 2010 as a demonstration mission for the use of a stereo imager to gather topographic data from orbit. Tianhui-1B followed in May 2012 to provide a follow-on capability after the three-year service life of the first satellite.

The Tianhui-1 satellites are built by the Hangtian Dongfanghong Weixing Corporation and the Chinese Academy of Space Technology. They use two three-segment deployable solar arrays for power generation and have precise attitude control and pointing capability. The satellite payload is comprised of a three-dimensional imaging system for the acquisition of stereo imagery and a multi-band camera.

The stereo imager has a field of view of 25 degrees and achieves a ground resolution of five meters. It is sensitive across a wavelength range of 510 to 690 nanometers. The multi-band camera reaches a resolution of ten meters and covers four spectral channels in the blue, green, red and near infrared bands. Both imaging systems are covering a ground swath of 60 Kilometers.

The Tianhui satellite program has been merged with a portion of the Ziyuan Earth Observation program that includes civil and military remote sensing satellites. The Ziyuan-3 branch of the program is dedicated to stereo imaging and was likely combined with the Tianhui-1 satellite series, under operation by the People’s Liberation Army.

Monday’s launch utilized the Long March 2D version of China’s Chang Zheng launch vehicle series, occurring at 7:10:04 UTC. The two previous Tianhui satellites lifted off at precisely the same time. Heading to the south-west, Long March 2D was set for an ascent mission of around ten minutes. Confirmation of launch success was provided by Chinese space officials approximately half an hour after liftoff.

The Tianhui-1C satellite was detected in an orbit of 488 by 496 Kilometers at an inclination of 97.35° – matching the insertion orbits of the previous two satellites