China's Space Program Thread II

[Kalec]

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Key takeaway:

1. They started working on methane engine long ago. Well not quite wrong though, but I am not very optimistic on their progress.
2. The new 200-ton methane engine is design to be on par with Raptor.
3. If I am understanding it correctly, they are basically saying that they are producing engines on a 260% efficiency compared with 2021.

“其实我们从2000年就开始研制液氧甲烷发动机，当时在‘863’计划的支持下，已经把发动机组件的关键技术试验验证做完了，并不是现在才开始追赶马斯克的‘猛禽’。”11所大推力发动机总体研究室副主任张晓光说。

Rough translation: "In fact, we have been developing methane engine since 2000, when the key technical test verification of the engine components was done with the support of the '863' program, and are not just now starting to catch up with Musk's 'Raptor '" said Zhang Xiaoguang, deputy director of the overall research laboratory of the 11 Institute.

9型发动机中，有3型设计任务落到11所大推力发动机总体研究室。据张晓光介绍，200吨液氧甲烷发动机将应用于我国重型火箭的芯一级和二级上，综合性能指标与“猛禽”发动机相当。该型发动机的推进剂储备丰富、价格低廉，在商业航天色彩越来越浓的当下，恰逢其时。

Among 9 types of engines, there are three types of design tasks fall to 11 Institute. According to Zhang Xiaoguang, the 200-ton methane engine will be applied to the first and second stage of China's heavy rockets, with comprehensive performance indicators comparable to those of the Raptor engine. This type of engine has abundant propellant reserves and low price.

去年，六院西发公司的新一代大推力环保液体火箭发动机总装脉动生产线开工，生产效率比过去提高了30%。3月27日，该公司第二条总装脉动生产线正式投产应用。

Last year, they started manufacture new generation of liquid rocket engines in new assembly pulsation production line. The production efficiency increased by 30%.. the company's second assembly pulsation production line was officially put into operation.

 

[gelgoog]

The Russians were testing LOX/Methane engines in the 1990s. They even had a joint program with the French at one point. They tried multiple approaches, first they ran the LOX/LH2 engines in the main stage of the Energia (RD-0120) with LOX/Methane. Then they started making components specific to a LOX/Methane engine. They designed and made the turbopumps and got them operational. The whole thing got shelved though. The Japanese also had a LOX/Methane engine program going on for close to two decades at this point.

 

[luminary]

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Brought to you by the State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China

Putting a spacecraft on an asteroid or comet isn’t easy: small celestial bodies are fast and have so little gravity that landers can bounce away. Scientists have come up with

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for iron-rich asteroids (g). The Rosetta mission’s Philae lander had a harpoon (d) to stay attached to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. When the system failed to fire, the lander was left in a non-optimal location and orientation after an uncontrolled touchdown.

Schematic diagrams of probe anchoring methods. a, Ultrasonic drilling force-closure SCBAR20. b, Microspine SCBAR24. c, Disc-cutting SCBAR25. d, Harpoon SCBAR used in the Rosetta mission27. e, Envelope SCBAR32. f, Cementing SCBAR17. g, Magnetic SCBAR33. h, Telescoping spike SCBAR34.

Trends in the development of exploration missions and SCBARs:

a, Three-stage development of small-celestial-body (SCB) exploration missions and SCBARs and critical technologies for each stage.


b, Near term: the in-situ exploration of SCBs.


c, Medium term: mining of SCBs and planetary defence.


d, Long term: SCB colonization and resource relay stations for deep space exploration.

China’s future SCB exploration missions:
The guiding ideology of China’s SCB exploration missions is selection– exploration–control–utilization. On the basis of this principle, China will carry out a multi-stage and multi-mission SCB exploration project in the future, with plans to detect the Apollo-like asteroid 2016 HO3 from 2024 to 2026 and return the sample. After returning the sample, the probe will continue to sail to the main-belt comet 311P and fly around it to elucidate the differences between the surface compositions of asteroids and comets to reduce costs and improve the utilization of the probe*. During this mission, a microspine SCBAR or ultrasonic drill SCBAR will be used to anchor the probe to the asteroid and assist in sampling; at present a comparison and verification of the potential of the two candidates is underway.

*See also: Zhang, T., Xu, K. & Ding, X. China’s ambitions and challenges for asteroid–comet exploration. Nat. Astron. 5, 730–731 (2021).

 

[by78]

The chief of the Brazilian Space Agency Carlos de Moura and his team paid a visit to the Chinese Deep Space Exploration Laboratory. During the visit, the Chinese side expressed a desire to have Brazil join the International Lunar Research Base project.

 

[by78]

More on the theme of international cooperation. Chang'e-6 mission will have a French-built radon gas detector.

 

[by78]

Spectrographs taken by the Xihe solar observatory. The satellite can scan the Sun's surface in 46 seconds and produces some 760GB of raw data every day.

 

[by78]

The second Lijian-1 rocket from CAS Space/Zhongke has recently finished finally assembly. Launch is planned for May, 2023. It will carry into space Fucheng-1, TY-26, and several other satellites totaling one ton.

 

[by78]

 

[by78]

The Sino-French Space-based Multi-band Astronomical Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) satellite is currently undergoing final assembly and testing at the Shanghai Microsatellite Research Institute. SVOM is expected to be launched sometime in 2024 by a Long March 2C. It will hunt for gamma ray bursts.

 

[by78]

An illustration showing China's commercial satellite market. So far, more than 26 provinces and administrative regions have their own satellites. A total of 350 civilian satellites are in operation, distributed in 60 constellations, with the largest constellation having 83 satellites.

More than 10,000 satellites are planned.

The government of

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(渝中区) of Chongqing Municipality has teamed up with

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to develop a remote sensing satellite for Chongqing. The satellite is named Jiefangbei-1 (解放碑一号).