escobar
Brigadier
Thanks for the correction, but i can't no longer edit...One little correction: the one about Houston should be "Houston Intercontinental Airport"
China's Space Program News Thread
- Thread starter crazyinsane105
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SinoSoldier
Colonel
LM-7 inaugural flight in june....
Hmm ... then why is vapor coming out of that thing now?
Equation
Lieutenant General
Non launch engine test perhaps? NASA did this to the space shuttle all the time.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Cryogenics rockets like this are part freezer.
The vapor/fog is actually fuel / oxidizing agent s inside the rocket.
It is very hard to fill a pressurized tank full as the liquid fuel will want to expand and you get that air gap in typical propane tanks. To fill more fuel, the tank is bleed at a very low rate at where the air pocket will be so that it too can be filled with fuel.
According to the gas law, when the gas exits the tank, it want to expand, and in doing so, it sucks the heat around it (like a propane beer cooler grille) this condense the moisture in the air into fog and ice (which falls off when the rocket lifts off like the Apollo footage)
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
LM 7 is Liquid fueled, Are they fueling it now? though first flight was June.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
[/quote]China outlines its long-term vision for space science
2016/02/16
China's Wukong dark matter probe blasts off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert on December 17, 2015, opening a new era of Chinese space science. (Photo: Qu Jing Liang, China Daily)
China has emerged as a major player in space over the last decade or so, most notably for its human spaceflight endeavours and robotic exploration of the Moon. Despite having developed a range of advanced space capabilities and technologies, space science has been low down on the country’s agenda. But that is now changing.
In December China a probe to begin a timely hunt for dark matter, which will be followed this year by three more space science missions focussing on quantum entanglement and photon ‘teleportation’, x-ray astronomy, and space life science.
Before this China’s only space science missions were the Double Star programme with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Yinghuo-1 Mars probe aboard Russia’s Phobos-Grunt mission, which was terminated when the rocket failed to leave Earth orbit.
But China is entering a new era in which it aims to play a key role in areas including astronomy, space physics, fundamental physics and earth science.
Prospects for space science
Behind this new era in Chinese space science is Dr Wu Ji, director-general of the National Space Science Centre (NSSC) in Beijing, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Wu started off in ground-based communication antenna engineering, but started taking an ever deeper interest in space after being sent to the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands by the Chinese government in the mid-1980s.
Two events in 1986 – the Challenger shuttle disaster and the visit of Halley’s Comet – turned his head. Wu was able to follow ESA’s Giotto probe day by day in the ESTEC news room as it approached Halley's Comet. “That was very, very inspiring for a young engineer,” he recalls.
Three decades on, Wu has combined with colleagues across the country to provide a previously lacking long-term vision for Chinese space science that will assist scientists, government, the space industry and international partners.
“China is a big country, and in history China has made great contributions of making observations of the universe,” Wu says, noting that China was the first country to record sunspots, has records of returns of Halley's Comet since before the Common Era, and spotted a supernova during the Song dynasty (960–1279).
“But that was in the old days. In modern science and technology history, China has almost no contribution to science and to knowledge for human beings. Right now, China is a big country…and in GDP we are second in the world. And that's only money. So we have to make some contribution to human beings and our knowledge.”
To start the space science program, Wu and colleagues established some fundamental questions through a survey of the scientific community and holding many meetings in different research field in space science.
The result is the ‘’, (Chinese) released late last year. It provides a long term roadmap that will assist Chinese scientists, government agencies and international partners.
Fundamental questions
Much like the ESA’s and Nasa’s science strategy, it aims to delve into some of the most fundamental questions such as the formation and evolution of the universe and matter itself, the study of exoplanets and potential extra-terrestrial life, the formation and evolution of the solar system and its relationship with humanity, and new physics beyond the current basic theories.
From here, a committee chose potential missions based on the foundations and capabilities of Chinese space science, the potential impact of the project and how wide of an influence it may have.
Wu reveals that a selection of priority missions has taken place, and these are in various phases of study and development. He stresses also that many involve, or are open to, international cooperation.
The first mission approved is the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (), a space-weather observatory mission set up jointly by CAS and ESA.
Selected from among 13 joint Chinese-European proposals, the probe will how charged particles coming from the sun interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere using a new technique involving looking at different wavelengths of light. It is expected to launch in 2021.
This is joined by the Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Thermosphere mission () to investigate geomagnetic storms, and the Water Cycle Observation Mission () which will further understanding of the water cycle and global change using new microwave sensors.
Another, the Einstein Probe (), will look at the universe with a very sensitive X-ray camera. It will stare at a large sector of sky for a period of time before turning to another sector of the universe.
Operating in this new field of ‘transient astronomy’, the Einstein Probe will, with unprecedented sensitivity and a wide field of view, seek out short-lived X-ray events and help detect otherwise hard-to-observe black holes.
It will also aim to locate the electromagnetic wave counterparts of gravitational wave events – a current hot topic following the by the LIGO experiment – and survey the skies for phenomena related to supernovae, neutron stars, activity in galactic centres, gamma-ray bursts and more.
SMILE, MIT, WCOM and EP will likely enter the engineering phase this year, according to Wu Ji, and will be launched around or after 2020.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Cooperation and competition
They will variously involve international collaboration, such as with Germany (MIT), Leicester University in the UK (EP) and American and European scientists on WCOM, and Wu notes these are still open to participation.
In 2011 Nasa was banned by US Congress from collaborating with China except in most circumstances, but China has developed working relationships with ESA and Russia’s Roscosmos and other institutions.
There remains the possibility that China’s space science budget will be increased for the next Five Year Plan period, which would allow one or perhaps two more exciting missions to be approved.
If this happens, candidates will include the X-ray Timing and Polarization () probe to test fundamental physical laws in extreme conditions, Search for Terrestrial Exo-Planets () to detect earth-like planets within 20 parsecs of our Sun, the Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S) to study solar eruptions and their origins, and a demanding Solar Polar ORbit Telescope () mission.
SPORT would need to be launched by the new, heavy-lift rocket into an orbital plane outside that of the planets, via gravity assist from Jupiter.
These missions will not only involve cooperation, but will be complementing existing missions and ultimately will be competing against other countries and collaborations to make breakthroughs.
The elected missions will be developed during the 13th Five Year Plan period (2016-2020), and launched during the 14th (2021-2025).
National demand and public backing
Looking farther into the future there are outlines of ambitious missions to take China to 2030. These are divided into a series of programs focussing on Earth-like exoplanets, solar activity, black holes, astronomical spectra, celestial bodies and more.
Wu Ji says that beyond budget concerns, there is strong public backing for space science missions, so much so that contributing to human knowledge is actually a national demand.
“People are eager to see some breakthroughs, to say China has [made] a fundamental contribution to fundamental science. This is really a very hot field,” he says, noting that Chinese media and internet lit up with discussions of dark matter during the December launch of the Wukong probe.
Similarly, Nasa’s announcement of the discovery of flowing water on Mars last year sparked to back efforts in space for exploration and discovery rather than just security and economic needs.
Shenzhou-11 and Tiangong-2
The NSSC is also involved in more immediate space projects. The Centre is a subcontractor for payload subsystems in all the Chinese manned missions, including the Shenzhou spacecraft and Tiangong space labs.
Wu says sensors developed for the crewed mission and , which will launch later this year and dock in orbit, have been delivered and are awaiting launch.
Above: Shenzhou-11 seen in February 2016 (CCTV/framegrab).
One instrument Wu’s centre have provided for Tiangong-2 is an ocean topography microwave sensor. “It can measure the topography of the oceans to a very high, precise accuracy, like a few centimetres, and which can be used for study of the Earth's gravity field, and also for El Nino, for example, or this kind of large-scale climate change issues.”
NSSC teams are also working on payloads for the unprecedented to land on the far side of the Moon in late 2018, and China’s first independent mission to Mars, which involves an orbiter, lander and rover and could launch in .
“If China is successful in landing Chang’e-4 on the far side of the Moon this will an enormously significant event in the history of space exploration and the exploration of the Moon,” says Ian Crawford, Professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck University of London.
Above: The far side of the Moon, as seen by China's Chang'e-5-T1 test mission launched in 2014 (SASTIND)
Contributions to science
While it is early days for Chinese space science, it is looking very capable of making huge contributions.
China’s first ever dark matter probe, dubbed ‘Wukong’ or ‘Monkey King’, is now up and running in orbit after its .
Dark matter, which makes up five times more mass in the universe than ‘normal’ matter, is one of the most fundamental questions for the physicists. While scientists have inferred its existence through gravity, it does not interact electromagnetically, meaning we can’t see it.
However, Wukong is designed to detect dark matter particles from the very high energy gamma-rays or cosmic rays they may produce when they decay or annihilate, as happens when normal matter and anti-matter collide.
, Professor in the Departments of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University, told gbtimes shortly after launch that China’s science establishment has managed to hone in on a cutting-edge problem with a cutting-edge instrument and also launch at the right time.
Just days before launch, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN detected a signal that could offer tantalising clues to these rays, well within the range of energy the Chinese probe can detect.
“What they have shown is they have a real nose for the problem at the frontier,” Professor Natarajan says, adding that, “everything is aligned for them to make a breakthrough discovery”.
Last month team scientists the highly-sensitive instruments. “If the calibration goes well, the signs we seek will pop out from the data," said Chang Jin, DAMPE chief scientist and vice director of Purple Mountain Observatory.
The race to detect dark matter is heating up in space and on planet Earth, and China may or may not be able to claim the breakthrough, but it is starting to contribute to answering the fundamental riddles of the universe.
2016 and beyond
2016 will also see three more intriguing missions implemented by NSSC, fulfilling the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ (CAS) Strategic Priority Program which kicked off in 2011.
China is the world’s first space mission focussing on quantum entanglement (QUESS) in July, the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT) to study black holes later in the year, and April should see the recoverable Shijian-10 space life sciences satellite sent into orbit.
“Now, we are at the beginning,” says Wu, adding that scientists believe the discovery, exploration and research aspects of space activity have to be considered by the Chinese government. “The investment is still very small, so we hope it can be growing in the future.”
“I hope everything will continue and in the future China will have more and more science programs as one part of Chinese space activity.”
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