Oct 9, 2009
Frank Morring, Jr./Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China
Seven new Chinese astronauts will soon start their spaceflight trainingincluding the first two women in the expanded corps of 21as China moves ahead on a path aimed at launching a 20-metric-ton station by 2020.
Like their male counterparts, the women are military pilots with at least 1,000 hr. of flight time. Unlike the men, who are all fighter pilots, they were drawn from the cadre of about 200 female transport pilots in Chinas air force, says Lui Shujun, deputy director of the planning division of the China Manned Space Engineering Office and a member of Chinas astronaut selection panel.
The astronauts will rehearse for launch here inside the vehicle integration building, a massive structure visible from more than 20 km. (12.5 mi.) away across the Gobi Desert that is reminiscent of the larger Vehicle Assembly Building at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Entering their Shenzhou capsule from Level 9 of one of the two 93.5-meter-tall (307-ft.) vehicle-stacking bays, they will go through the countdown and 586-sec. ascent sequences they will follow en route to rendezvous and docking with the Tiangong 1 target spacecraft. The Tiangong will be stacked on its Long March 2F launch vehicle here as well, and rolled on rails atop one of two mobile launch platforms to the single pad 1.5 km. away.
Overhead images of the launch site are available at Google Earth, and a Chinese-supplied photo of it appeared in this magazine six years ago (AW&ST Aug. 25, 2003, p. 30). But until Sept. 25, only a handful of foreigners had visited the site, and no foreign journalists. That has changed now as the Chinese human-spaceflight organization and NASA pursue back-channel discussions that may lead to closer cooperation.
Against that background, a private delegation organized by the Space Foundationincluding this editorreceived unprecedented access to space facilities here and in Beijing, with a first look at the next two human spacecraft to be launchedTiangong 1 and Shenzhou 8. As part of that visit, two former space shuttle commandersFred Gregory, who relayed messages between Beijing and Washington at the behest of NASA Administrator Charles Bolden; and Tom Henricks, now president of Aviation Weekdiscussed their spaceflight experiences with five of the six Chinese astronauts who have been there, too (AW&ST Sept. 28, p. 24).
Officially, NASA says Gregory traveled to China as a private citizen and that any suppositions about the intent of NASA or the Obama administration associated with this trip are premature. And while Bolden currently has no plans to travel to China, a senior agency official says he might go next year.
The Obama administration raised the possibility of deeper human-spaceflight cooperation with China early on. In April, John Holdren, the presidential science adviser, signaled in an interview with the journal Science that U.S. astronauts could travel to orbit on Chinese spacecraft after the shuttle fleet is retired, depending on how our relationship develops.
Holdren, who has since traveled to China to discuss climate change, said he thinks its possible in principle to develop the required degree of confidence in the Chinese. I put it out there only as speculation, but I dont think it should be ruled out.
Chinese human-spaceflight officials freely admit they are playing catch-up to the U.S. and Russia, and were very open with both their questions and the answers they gave their U.S. visitors. A tour of this gleaming launch facilitybuilt expressly for the Shenzhou systemran more than an hour longer than scheduled as Cui Jijun, director of the facility, and general engineer Lu Jinrong discussed its capabilities through translators.
The human-spaceflight infrastructurethe launch complex, fire-control room and crew quarters (where the U.S. delegation was housed in a separate area set aside for high-ranking officials attending launches)were built in the early 1990s for Project 921, the effort set in motion in 1992 to orbit a 20-metric-ton Chinese space station by 2020. The first phase culminated in the Oct. 15, 2003, launch of Yang Liwei on the 14-orbit Shenzhou 5 mission (AW&ST Oct. 20, 2003, p. 22).
Phase 2 of the project is now in full swing, and is scheduled to take its next step into space here beginning in about a years time when the Tiangong 1 target is to be orbited. In this phase, the human-spaceflight program aims to develop Chinas capabilities in extravehicular activity (EVA) and rendezvous and docking. The Tiangong 1 will give Shenzhou pilots a chance to practice docking, just as Shenzhou 7 made astronaut Zhai Zhigang Chinas first spacewalker a year ago (AW&ST Oct. 6, 2008, p. 27).
Tiangong 1 will arrive at the launch site by rail from a nearly air base after being flown from the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) in Beijing. It will enter processing at the spacecraft-reception hall where human-rated spacecraft and other satellites are assembled and tested.
The hall, empty now in the gap between missions, has a 12-meter-tall scaffold for Shenzhou assembly and a smaller fixture for low-Earth- and medium-Earth-orbit satellites, including the recoverable spacecraft that gave China experience building thermal protection systems. Spacecraft entering the hall pass through a large air shower room where rows of high-pressure air ducts blow the desert dust off its container before it enters the class-10,000 clean-room area.
As is typical throughout the facilities here, the preparation hall is festooned with bright red and gold banners bearing slogans for the workforce. One exhorts the 20-30 technicians who work in the hall to make all efforts to do your job. Another encourages strictness and carefulness, dedication and integrity.
It takes about 60 days to prepare a Shenzhou for stacking, says Cui, although his center is studying whether it would be possible to trim that time by about 10 days. From the preparation hall, the Shenzhou vehicle is transferred to the vehicle assembly building, which is adjacent to a large hall where Long March stages and boosters are delivered by rail horizontally. The rocket hall also services a separate pad for satellite launches located about 600 meters from the Shenzhou pad.
The rocket hall and satellite launch pad were not on the tour, although the Chinese officials distributed a photo album containing shots of Long March sections lined up horizontally in the hall. From there, they move into the stacking area through a side door and are lifted into position atop one of the mobile launch platforms by a overhead crane with a lifting capacity of 15 metric tons.
The launch platforms themselves weigh 750 metric tons, and are moved by eight electric motors mounted two to a corner of the platform. Cui, the center director, says only one of the platforms has been used so far, and while it had not been repainted since the Shenzhou 7 launch last year, it appears to be in good shape.
The tracks for that launch platform run directly to the pad 1,500 meters away. Tracks from the second, as-yet-unused stacking bay run out through its own 74-meter-high door to a shunting system that moves the platform over to the main tracks. Each of the two doors, which resemble those on the VAB at Kennedy, has six 20-metric-ton sections that are raised to make way for the completed stack, and two more that are pulled open horizontally.
The pad itself is 105 meters tall, with a single-post lightning-protection system on top. The launch platform is positioned over a flame trench that splits the exhaust from the Long March YF-20 hypergolic engines in the core vehicle and boosters, which burn dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (UDMH) to generate about 177,000 lb. thrust each. The trench, lined with reinforced concrete, diverts the exhaust upward from exits on both sides of the pad structure.
One interesting aspect of the pad is its crew-escape system, a steel pipe that drops from the Shenzhou orbital-module hatch the crew uses to enter the vehicle straight down to a reinforced bunker below the pads. Astronauts drop down in a flexible fire-retardant bag, slowing their descent by pressing their arms against the sides of the pipe. The harrowing process takes about 1 min. to complete.
Crew escape after ignition is provided by a launch-abort system similar to the one under development for NASAs Orion crew exploration vehicle. Operational during the first 120 sec. of flight, the solid-fueled tower would pull the Shenzhou off a failing Long March inside the fairing that protects it during normal ascent, while square air brakes deploy from the fairing sides to stabilize the escaping vehicle and reduce g-loads on the crew inside. Once clear of the stack, the fairing and orbital module separate, and the Shenzhou reentry vehicle rides its parachutes back to Earth.
Launch is controlled from a 400-sq.-meter firing room 7 km. away, linked to the pad with fiber-optic cable. Four rows of workstations face four large LED screens that give the launch-control team its only view of the liftoff. At the front of the room is a podium where top officials address the team after the launch sequence is concluded.
In a nominal sequence, the abort system is jettisoned 120 sec. after liftoff. The four boosters fall away 140 sec. into the flight, and the fairing separates at 200 sec. The Shenzhou spacecraft separates from the Long March upper stage at 580 sec.; a few seconds after that, control of the mission shifts to Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC).
The first two manned Shenzhou flights had solar arrays on the sides of the orbital module at the top of the spacecraft as well as a larger set on the service module aft of the reentry vehicle. But Shenzhou 7 flew without themso Zhai would have more room to move during his EVA. Shenzhou 8 will fly without a crew, but the flight hardware under construction at CAST, and subsequent models in the series, will retain the Shenzhou 7 configuration with the exception of a mechanical docking ring at its forward end.
When the BACC takes over, the Shenzhou spacecraft is in a nominal initial orbit of 200 X 350 km. The Beijing controllers circularize the orbit at 343 km,, and the mission begins working through its timeline. On the next Shenzhou flight, that will include guiding the unpiloted spacecraft to the Tiangong 1 target for Chinas first orbital docking.
Under Phase 2 of Chinas human spaceflight plan, Tiangong 1 will evolve from a target for docking practice to a human-tended space station. Weighing about 8.5 metric tons, the vehicle will be launched initially from here on a Long March variant. Later versions will serve as man-tended space stations, and an upgrade will serve as a cargo vehicle for the 20-metric-ton spacecraft China hopes to activate in orbit by 2020. Those latter two spacecraft will fly on the new Long March 5 from the launch facility under constriction at Hainan Island, where the 19 deg. N. Lat. gives better performance.
The need for scientists to work on the station will require expanding the Chinese astronaut corps into the civilian sector, says Liu Shujun, the selection-committee member. That will begin with a new round of candidates after about five years, he says.
While China is moving methodically through its plan to orbit a space station, the possibility of greater cooperation with NASA could change the schedule. Wang Wenbao, director general of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, held a private conversation with Gregory on Sept. 22. At a subsequent meeting with the rest of the U.S. delegation, he also ruled nothing out in his call for greater cooperation in human spaceflight, including participation in the International Space Station program when asked directly if China would be willing to join its orbital lab to the ISS.
China Offers First Look At Shenzhou Facilities | AVIATION WEEK
Frank Morring, Jr./Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China
Seven new Chinese astronauts will soon start their spaceflight trainingincluding the first two women in the expanded corps of 21as China moves ahead on a path aimed at launching a 20-metric-ton station by 2020.
Like their male counterparts, the women are military pilots with at least 1,000 hr. of flight time. Unlike the men, who are all fighter pilots, they were drawn from the cadre of about 200 female transport pilots in Chinas air force, says Lui Shujun, deputy director of the planning division of the China Manned Space Engineering Office and a member of Chinas astronaut selection panel.
The astronauts will rehearse for launch here inside the vehicle integration building, a massive structure visible from more than 20 km. (12.5 mi.) away across the Gobi Desert that is reminiscent of the larger Vehicle Assembly Building at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Entering their Shenzhou capsule from Level 9 of one of the two 93.5-meter-tall (307-ft.) vehicle-stacking bays, they will go through the countdown and 586-sec. ascent sequences they will follow en route to rendezvous and docking with the Tiangong 1 target spacecraft. The Tiangong will be stacked on its Long March 2F launch vehicle here as well, and rolled on rails atop one of two mobile launch platforms to the single pad 1.5 km. away.
Overhead images of the launch site are available at Google Earth, and a Chinese-supplied photo of it appeared in this magazine six years ago (AW&ST Aug. 25, 2003, p. 30). But until Sept. 25, only a handful of foreigners had visited the site, and no foreign journalists. That has changed now as the Chinese human-spaceflight organization and NASA pursue back-channel discussions that may lead to closer cooperation.
Against that background, a private delegation organized by the Space Foundationincluding this editorreceived unprecedented access to space facilities here and in Beijing, with a first look at the next two human spacecraft to be launchedTiangong 1 and Shenzhou 8. As part of that visit, two former space shuttle commandersFred Gregory, who relayed messages between Beijing and Washington at the behest of NASA Administrator Charles Bolden; and Tom Henricks, now president of Aviation Weekdiscussed their spaceflight experiences with five of the six Chinese astronauts who have been there, too (AW&ST Sept. 28, p. 24).
Officially, NASA says Gregory traveled to China as a private citizen and that any suppositions about the intent of NASA or the Obama administration associated with this trip are premature. And while Bolden currently has no plans to travel to China, a senior agency official says he might go next year.
The Obama administration raised the possibility of deeper human-spaceflight cooperation with China early on. In April, John Holdren, the presidential science adviser, signaled in an interview with the journal Science that U.S. astronauts could travel to orbit on Chinese spacecraft after the shuttle fleet is retired, depending on how our relationship develops.
Holdren, who has since traveled to China to discuss climate change, said he thinks its possible in principle to develop the required degree of confidence in the Chinese. I put it out there only as speculation, but I dont think it should be ruled out.
Chinese human-spaceflight officials freely admit they are playing catch-up to the U.S. and Russia, and were very open with both their questions and the answers they gave their U.S. visitors. A tour of this gleaming launch facilitybuilt expressly for the Shenzhou systemran more than an hour longer than scheduled as Cui Jijun, director of the facility, and general engineer Lu Jinrong discussed its capabilities through translators.
The human-spaceflight infrastructurethe launch complex, fire-control room and crew quarters (where the U.S. delegation was housed in a separate area set aside for high-ranking officials attending launches)were built in the early 1990s for Project 921, the effort set in motion in 1992 to orbit a 20-metric-ton Chinese space station by 2020. The first phase culminated in the Oct. 15, 2003, launch of Yang Liwei on the 14-orbit Shenzhou 5 mission (AW&ST Oct. 20, 2003, p. 22).
Phase 2 of the project is now in full swing, and is scheduled to take its next step into space here beginning in about a years time when the Tiangong 1 target is to be orbited. In this phase, the human-spaceflight program aims to develop Chinas capabilities in extravehicular activity (EVA) and rendezvous and docking. The Tiangong 1 will give Shenzhou pilots a chance to practice docking, just as Shenzhou 7 made astronaut Zhai Zhigang Chinas first spacewalker a year ago (AW&ST Oct. 6, 2008, p. 27).
Tiangong 1 will arrive at the launch site by rail from a nearly air base after being flown from the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) in Beijing. It will enter processing at the spacecraft-reception hall where human-rated spacecraft and other satellites are assembled and tested.
The hall, empty now in the gap between missions, has a 12-meter-tall scaffold for Shenzhou assembly and a smaller fixture for low-Earth- and medium-Earth-orbit satellites, including the recoverable spacecraft that gave China experience building thermal protection systems. Spacecraft entering the hall pass through a large air shower room where rows of high-pressure air ducts blow the desert dust off its container before it enters the class-10,000 clean-room area.
As is typical throughout the facilities here, the preparation hall is festooned with bright red and gold banners bearing slogans for the workforce. One exhorts the 20-30 technicians who work in the hall to make all efforts to do your job. Another encourages strictness and carefulness, dedication and integrity.
It takes about 60 days to prepare a Shenzhou for stacking, says Cui, although his center is studying whether it would be possible to trim that time by about 10 days. From the preparation hall, the Shenzhou vehicle is transferred to the vehicle assembly building, which is adjacent to a large hall where Long March stages and boosters are delivered by rail horizontally. The rocket hall also services a separate pad for satellite launches located about 600 meters from the Shenzhou pad.
The rocket hall and satellite launch pad were not on the tour, although the Chinese officials distributed a photo album containing shots of Long March sections lined up horizontally in the hall. From there, they move into the stacking area through a side door and are lifted into position atop one of the mobile launch platforms by a overhead crane with a lifting capacity of 15 metric tons.
The launch platforms themselves weigh 750 metric tons, and are moved by eight electric motors mounted two to a corner of the platform. Cui, the center director, says only one of the platforms has been used so far, and while it had not been repainted since the Shenzhou 7 launch last year, it appears to be in good shape.
The tracks for that launch platform run directly to the pad 1,500 meters away. Tracks from the second, as-yet-unused stacking bay run out through its own 74-meter-high door to a shunting system that moves the platform over to the main tracks. Each of the two doors, which resemble those on the VAB at Kennedy, has six 20-metric-ton sections that are raised to make way for the completed stack, and two more that are pulled open horizontally.
The pad itself is 105 meters tall, with a single-post lightning-protection system on top. The launch platform is positioned over a flame trench that splits the exhaust from the Long March YF-20 hypergolic engines in the core vehicle and boosters, which burn dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (UDMH) to generate about 177,000 lb. thrust each. The trench, lined with reinforced concrete, diverts the exhaust upward from exits on both sides of the pad structure.
One interesting aspect of the pad is its crew-escape system, a steel pipe that drops from the Shenzhou orbital-module hatch the crew uses to enter the vehicle straight down to a reinforced bunker below the pads. Astronauts drop down in a flexible fire-retardant bag, slowing their descent by pressing their arms against the sides of the pipe. The harrowing process takes about 1 min. to complete.
Crew escape after ignition is provided by a launch-abort system similar to the one under development for NASAs Orion crew exploration vehicle. Operational during the first 120 sec. of flight, the solid-fueled tower would pull the Shenzhou off a failing Long March inside the fairing that protects it during normal ascent, while square air brakes deploy from the fairing sides to stabilize the escaping vehicle and reduce g-loads on the crew inside. Once clear of the stack, the fairing and orbital module separate, and the Shenzhou reentry vehicle rides its parachutes back to Earth.
Launch is controlled from a 400-sq.-meter firing room 7 km. away, linked to the pad with fiber-optic cable. Four rows of workstations face four large LED screens that give the launch-control team its only view of the liftoff. At the front of the room is a podium where top officials address the team after the launch sequence is concluded.
In a nominal sequence, the abort system is jettisoned 120 sec. after liftoff. The four boosters fall away 140 sec. into the flight, and the fairing separates at 200 sec. The Shenzhou spacecraft separates from the Long March upper stage at 580 sec.; a few seconds after that, control of the mission shifts to Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC).
The first two manned Shenzhou flights had solar arrays on the sides of the orbital module at the top of the spacecraft as well as a larger set on the service module aft of the reentry vehicle. But Shenzhou 7 flew without themso Zhai would have more room to move during his EVA. Shenzhou 8 will fly without a crew, but the flight hardware under construction at CAST, and subsequent models in the series, will retain the Shenzhou 7 configuration with the exception of a mechanical docking ring at its forward end.
When the BACC takes over, the Shenzhou spacecraft is in a nominal initial orbit of 200 X 350 km. The Beijing controllers circularize the orbit at 343 km,, and the mission begins working through its timeline. On the next Shenzhou flight, that will include guiding the unpiloted spacecraft to the Tiangong 1 target for Chinas first orbital docking.
Under Phase 2 of Chinas human spaceflight plan, Tiangong 1 will evolve from a target for docking practice to a human-tended space station. Weighing about 8.5 metric tons, the vehicle will be launched initially from here on a Long March variant. Later versions will serve as man-tended space stations, and an upgrade will serve as a cargo vehicle for the 20-metric-ton spacecraft China hopes to activate in orbit by 2020. Those latter two spacecraft will fly on the new Long March 5 from the launch facility under constriction at Hainan Island, where the 19 deg. N. Lat. gives better performance.
The need for scientists to work on the station will require expanding the Chinese astronaut corps into the civilian sector, says Liu Shujun, the selection-committee member. That will begin with a new round of candidates after about five years, he says.
While China is moving methodically through its plan to orbit a space station, the possibility of greater cooperation with NASA could change the schedule. Wang Wenbao, director general of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, held a private conversation with Gregory on Sept. 22. At a subsequent meeting with the rest of the U.S. delegation, he also ruled nothing out in his call for greater cooperation in human spaceflight, including participation in the International Space Station program when asked directly if China would be willing to join its orbital lab to the ISS.
China Offers First Look At Shenzhou Facilities | AVIATION WEEK
