China's Space Program News Thread
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escobar
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30cm resolution sat equipped with radar from the 14th CETC Institute.
Good overview of the 46 billion yuan military-civil fusion Gaofen project :
escobar
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With this launch, China completed the three sats constellation for space objects surveillance. Shiyan-6 solve the problems of space situational awareness, namely, to determine the background characteristics of the space environment, track, survey and identify low-orbit objects, as well as to observe geostationary objects and determine their coordinates.
, SY-6(3) optical system has a super-black surface coating material with the ability to absorb sunlight and earth light to improve the satellite ability to detect space object. It exceeds the performance of similar products in the United States, France, and Israel currently in service in the aerospace field, and the absorbance and technology maturity are better than those of NASA’s nanotechnology.
But how do they know that they exceeded the US? Isnt this stuff normally classified?
Statements from official publications that specifically say things like "reached world leading level" or "exceeded the equivalent US version" are rarely said but they are sometimes dropped. Sometimes I wonder if it's just another subtle hint that the Chinese state's intelligence gathering and information collection efforts are effective but then why would they reveal these things occasionally? I've noticed this in the past and thought there is no way they would know unless those cyberwarfare activities are this productive lol. Sometimes it's probably just there to troll or poor journalism.
That depends. NASA does publish something. What China claimed is "exceeding the NASA roadmap goal". Whether NASA has anything better in the pipeline being classified is an unknown, but China did not claim that.
This is what China claimed to exceed.
NASA Technology Roadmaps TA 10: Nanotechnology published in 2015. The technology is supposed to be matured in 2017.
Table 5. TA 10.1.3 Technology Candidates – not in priority order
10.1.3.6 Optical Blacks Provides absorption of stray radiation to enhance detector sensitivity.
This is the detailed figures published in 2011
In particular, the team found that the material absorbs 99.5 percent of the light in the ultraviolet and visible, dipping to 98 percent in the longer or far-infrared bands.
See my post #6919 for details.
When China says "exceeding" this time, it refers to a very specific figure (99.5%) from NASA's published roadmap. That figure is in public domain. China did not claim "exceeding some secret American black technology". Basically, it is published figure against published figure.
Regarding the credibility of official statement, I think Chinese official statement is very trustworthy or even more so than US. The track record of China is that it does not say as much as US, but when it does say something it does so in a quite watertight manner.
Thanks but there are occasions where Chinese state media allow statements on reaching or surpassing certain isolated qualities on other matters usually relating to military where there is no way to know in public domain what the equivalent American level is truly at. Anyway I could be misremembering but maybe next time it happens, it can be noted. On this particular matter, you're right about the comparison of published figures.
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