China's Space Program News Thread

[Blackstone]

As to the Russian Space Shuttle Program, the Buran...it was another massive program by the Russians that they could not afford and helped bankrupt them.

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They ended up having one orbital flight. Two orbits. That only space flight occurred at on 15 November 1988 for about three hours.

It was a monumental accomplishment...but sadly, short lived.

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That was it folks. The program was officially cancelled in 1993 after the fall of the Soviets.

They even developed, similar to NASA the piggy back method of using a large transport to ccarry thier shuttle around.

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So, one operational shuttle that made one flight. Sadly, that one space craft was destroyed when its building collapsed. A second orbiter was started...but never finished.

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Russian spaceplane looked a lot like the Space Shuttle, did we give them the technology or did they steal it?

 

[Jeff Head]

Russian spaceplane looked a lot like the Space Shuttle, did we give them the technology or did they steal it?

The Russians developed it themselves.

It was not an exact copy by any stretch. It was larger, bulkier...but they made it work (at least that one time in 1988). I am sure they had their espionage ongoing, as did we.

But by the time they made the 1st flight, we had been flying our shuttles for eight years.

There is no doubt from just looking at it that they used a lot of the same concepts and ideas...and why not? By that time it had proven itself to work.

But they simply could not afford it.

They (the whole nation) went bankrupt and failed because they were trying to replicate and counter all of the high tech stuff the US was throwing at them...and they simply could not afford to do so.. The never finished the second, and the one they did fly that ne time sat in a large building, steadily losing integrity...not being maintained...to the [point where the building itself collapsed and destroyed the one usable shuteel they had.

 

[escobar]

China's planned launch of a quantum satellite in August is a pioneering project that can test quantum communication technologies and thus help realize a faster and safer internet, said an Austrian physicist Thursday in Vienna.

Anton Zeilinger, a professor at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information told China Central Television (CCTV) that China's upcoming experiments concerning quantum satellite is of great significance as it is related to long-distance data transmission and communication, which will form a future quantum internet safer and faster than the current one.

The vision which many of us have is that one day we’ll have a world-wide quantum internet, which would be much safer and faster than the existing infrastructure; and that internet will not only consist of cables, glass fiber cables, but also of satellites for long-distance communication.

"This satellite will be the first one worldwide, which tests this new technology, and I'm sure we will learn a lot about how the data rates are, how the quality of the data is, how the messages can really be sent and things like that," said Zeilinger. He added that it will be the first experiment carried in space and will cover larger distances than on the ground.

"There has been quantum communication tested on the ground, you know, over 150 kilometers and with glass fibers and so on, but this is the first experiment in space, which will allow to cover larger distances than you can do on ground. It is the very first experiment of this kind, so this is really a pioneering project," he added.

China started its efforts on the satellite since 2011 and said recently that it is ready to conduct quantum communication experiments once the satellite is launched. The planned satellite is divided into two sections, the upper section system of platform control and the lower section for effective loads – instruments and equipment the satellite carries, the quantum communication key unit, the quantum entanglement emission unit, the quantum entangled source and the quantum experiment control and process unit.

The Chinese researchers are still facing some challenges as Zeilinger said. While Zeilinger and his team will work at a telescope observatory in Vienna when the satellite is launched, in coordination with their Chinese counterparts to observe and track the satellite.

"The challenges are to make sure that the equipment works up there. You cannot go there and fix it. You know it has to be working all the time. There are some challenges maybe due to cosmic background radiation. The main challenge is to really be able to communicate all the time. This telescope will have to follow very precisely the satellite; the satellite has a telescope which sends down the photons precisely. To have all this work is not simple," said Zeilinger.

He said he is confident that the experiment will be a huge success."From my impression, my Chinese friends and colleagues are very well prepared. The technology is there, there have been many tests before. So I am confident that this will be a big success," concluded Zeilinger.

 

[escobar]

More and more Chinese in various trades are starting to benefit from high-tech made-in-China high-resolution satellites. They have come to benefit from analytical confirmations and predictions from these satellites. There are now 26 satellite data centers set up in 26 of China's 32 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. These centers are especially useful in such sparsely-populated super large autonomous regions as Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia.

Asiya Manlike is a grassland ecologist who has been working in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region for up to two decades. She says she and her colleagues do not have to trek far and wide anymore to do surveys thanks to the high-resolution satellites or Gaofen as they are referred to in Chinese.

Back then, Asiya Manlike and her colleagues used to ride horses for at least 10 days for a single survey outing on the grassland; and now, they could tuck away in their offices looking at high-resolution satellite maps and photos. Even if foreign satellite services were available in the past, Asiya Manlike and her colleagues could not afford them.

The China-made satellites have changed it all for Chinese researchers with easily affordable high-resolution maps and photos."It shortens our working time and cuts down our expenses. We can analyze in office the data from high-resolution satellites and we can do it anytime we like," says Asiya Manlike, head of grassland ecological department of the Xinjiang animal husbandry academy.

Animal husbandry is not the only day-to-day aspect in Xinjiang which benefits from high-resolution satellites. Farmers also get information on irrigation from them.

"It monitors the snow caps and snow depths, the snow melt for the coming year; with these, we can accurately predict the irrigation amount, the inflow of water, the amount of snow and ice we can benefit from; we can also effectively manage the area of our farmland," explains Huang Xinli, head of the Xinjiang satellite data and application center.

The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is another sparsely-populated region in China which benefits from high-resolution satellites. Local researchers have been resorting to satellite maps and photos in their environmental protection, water conservancy and ecological migration studies.

"One of our main poverty alleviation methods for Ningxia is to relocate those farmers from the central arid belt to the relatively wet belt in the north of the autonomous region. We get the info for emigration from high-resolution satellite. We can provide the authorities with straightforward demonstration this way," says Wu Jiamin, director of the Ningxia remote sensing surveying and mapping institute

 

[vincent]

China creates high-tech insulation for space

Used in subs to dampen noises?

 

[siegecrossbow]

Used in subs to dampen noises?

More like thermal protection for reentry vehicles.

 

[Skywatcher]

@Skywatcher

regarding your latest write up... isn't the opening picture merely a picture of Skylon? Was the CCTV broadcast claiming that Skylon was their hybrid spaceplane, or merely showing Skylon as an example of such a spaceplane? Because you make it sound like the former, and I'm not sure what the original video actually said...

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.... also, come on man, way too much speculation about "space bombers" later on in the write up

Well, the editors like us to put many pictures in the entry as we can, and a lot of the nice fan art is of 'hypersonic strike', so.... (note that we didn't mention anything about hypersonic strike in the main body itself, just in the captions for the fan art work).

Yeah, first pic is of the Skylon (I used the side shot since the Chinese hypersonic spaceplane would probably look reasonably similar when viewed from the side).

 

[escobar]

China's Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft has arrived at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Saturday, readying itself for liftoff later in the year for a docking with the country's manned first space lab Tiangong-2.Tiangong-2 will be launched in September, to be followed by Shenzhou-11 with two astronauts on board.

Like its predecessors, Shenzhou-11 also has three modules, namely the orbital module, the returning capsule and the propelling module. Though it is designed with three cabins for as many astronauts, Shenzhou-11 will be launched with just two astronauts on board.

"It's a manned spacecraft. If there are fewer people on board, we can transport more cargo in the stead for to-go and to-come-back trips with materials for space experimentation," says Zheng Wei, assistant chief designer of spacecraft system with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

This will be China's last manned mission before it completes its own space station.

Shenzhou-11 will dock with Tiangong-2 for a joint 30-day space flight, which will be longest manned space flight for China. It is therefore also a test for the spacecraft itself."Shenzhou-II has inherited all the tried and true features of its predecessors of Shenzhou-8, -9 and -10. It is therefore of confirmed stability, higher reliability and more maturity," Zheng adds.

 

[escobar]

Progress of Strategic Priority Program on Space science :

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[TerraN_EmpirE]

More like thermal protection for reentry vehicles.

Not really. Areogel is light weight but not suited for reentry protection NASA has used it for insulation of Rovers and Probes as well as Space suits The USN has used it for Dive suits. It's was also used as a medium to capture space dust or in sophisticated optics.