China's Manned Space Program

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China launches space station core module Tianhe - Xinhua | English.news.cn

China launches space station core module Tianhe
Source: Xinhua | 2021-04-29 11:36:47 | Editor: huaxia

WENCHANG, Hainan, April 29 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday sent into space the core module of its space station, kicking off a series of key launch missions that aim to complete the construction of the station by the end of next year.

The Long March-5B Y2 rocket, carrying the Tianhe module, blasted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of the southern island province of Hainan.

Tianhe will act as the management and control hub of the space station Tiangong, meaning Heavenly Palace, with a node that could dock with up to three spacecraft at a time for short stays, or two for long, said Bai Linhou, deputy chief designer of the space station at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

Tianhe has a total length of 16.6 meters, a maximum diameter of 4.2 meters and a takeoff mass of 22.5 tonnes, and is the largest spacecraft developed by China.

The space station will be a T shape with the core module at the center and a lab capsule on each side. Each module will be over 20 tonnes. When the station docks with both manned and cargo spacecraft, its weight could reach nearly 100 tonnes.

The station will operate in the low-Earth orbit at an altitude from 340 km to 450 km. It has a designed lifespan of 10 years, but experts believe it could last more than 15 years with appropriate maintenance and repairs.

"We will learn how to assemble, operate and maintain large spacecraft in orbit, and we aim to build Tiangong into a state-level space lab supporting the long stay of astronauts and large-scale scientific, technological and application experiments," said Bai.

"The station is also expected to contribute to the peaceful development and utilization of space resources through international cooperation, as well as to enrich technologies and experience for China's future explorations into deeper space," Bai said.

As the foundation of the station, Tianhe will help China's aerospace engineers carry out the verification of key technologies, including flexible solar wings, in-orbit assembly and maintenance, and above all a new life support system.

China will also send the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft and Shenzhou-12 manned craft this year to dock with the core module. Three astronauts will be aboard Shenzhou-12 and stay in orbit for three months, said Hao Chun, director of the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

"We will transport support materials, necessary spare parts and equipment first, and then our crew," said Hao.

Tianzhou-3 cargo craft and Shenzhou-13 manned spaceship will also be launched later this year to dock with Tianhe, and another three astronauts will then begin their six-month stay in orbit.

The longest stay in space so far by Chinese astronauts is 33 days. "In previous missions, we sent water and oxygen to space along with astronauts. But for a stay of three to six months, water and oxygen would stuff the cargo craft full with no room for other necessary goods and materials. So we installed the core module with a new life support system to recycle urine, exhaled breath condensate (EBC) and carbon dioxide," said Bai.

After the five launch missions this year, China plans six missions, including the launch of the Wentian and Mengtian lab modules, two cargo spacecraft and two manned spaceships, in 2022 to complete the construction of the space station.

"We have to make sure every launch is reliable and operation of spacecraft in orbit is safe and sound. Every mission is a test for our organization, management, technology and support ability," said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's manned space program.

 

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CNSA astronauts will soon have a permanent presence in space. 365 days

 

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View attachment 738463View attachment 738464

Looks at those scientist or engineer... They are so tiny compare to the Tianhe -Core. China Space Station Core is extremely big.
I might believe it weights 35 tons instead.

 

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April 2021 marks the 10 year anniversary of NASA's China Exclusion Policy

 

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April 2021 marks the 10 year anniversary of NASA's China Exclusion Policy

ISS will closed shop in 2024. Trust me! Unless US can come out with hundred over billion USD.

Russian not continuing, ESA will be lured to join China space station for free. Only dumb Japan think they still lead in space tech refuse to join China space station but Japan do not have much money and I bet they lack the tech to maintain Russian core. US and Japan will be left to doom.

 

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Memorable moments of China's manned space missions

 

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China's space station will have ion propulsion system
and more efficient than ISS

 

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China module has just landed on MARS, China News Media reported.

 

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China / Science
China successfully lands Mars rover Zhu Rong after ‘nine minutes of terror’

• Landing a rover on Mars involves a communications blackout period during which it must land without human intervention
• Only half of all attempts to land on the red planet have succeeded because of its challenging atmosphere

China lands Zhu Rong Mars rover after ‘nine minutes of terror’

Only half of all attempts to land on the red planet have succeeded because of its challenging atmosphere.

www.scmp.com

 

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Zhurong sends back signals, marking success of Tianwen-1’s landing on Mars
Deng Xiaoci
08:41 May 15 2021

Tianwen-1, China’s first interplanetary expedition, has spectacularly conquered a new major milestone, with its lander-rover combination successfully soft-landing at the planned site in the southern part of a vast plain known as Utopia Planitia on Mars on early Saturday morning, Global Times learned from the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

According to the CNSA, Tianwen-1 probe lowered its altitude from the Martian parking orbit around 1 am Saturday, before its lander-rover combination separated with the orbiter around 4 am. The lander-rover combination then took another flight of three hours before its entry into Mars atmosphere.

The Chinese spacecraft, after entering the Mars atmosphere, spent around nine minutes decelerating, hovering for obstacle avoidance and cushioning, before its soft landing on the designated landing site at the Utopia Planitia, CNSA said.

The orbiter rose and returned to the parking orbit 30 minutes after the separation, to provide relay communication for the landing craft combo, the Chinese space agency said.

CNSA underscored that it has conducted cooperation with a range of international aerospace organizations and countries including the Europe Space Agency, Argentina, France and Austria, throughout the implementation of its Tianwen-1 Mars mission.

The smooth landing of the Tianwen-1 probe marked that China has become the third nation that has achieved such a feat, following Russia and the US.

The successful touchdown of Tianwen-1 took place on the 295th day of its journey after it was launched and sent into planned orbit via a Long March-5 carrier rocket from Wenchang Spaceport in South China’s Hainan Province on July 23, 2020.

The whole entry, descent and landing (EDL) of Tianwen-1 took around 9 minutes, during which the speed of the craft was reduced from 20,000 kilometers per hour to zero, according to the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) the developer of the lander-rover combo of Tianwen-1.

The EDL of the Chinese craft first involved an aerodynamic decelerating stage before it deployed parachute and variant thrust engine systems.

Such an aerodynamic decelerating stage reduced the craft's speed by some 90 percent, and then the parachute stage helped it further decelerate to some 100 meters per second before the thrust engine systems were turned on to enable the craft to enter a hovering stage as it reaches some 100 meters above the surface, said Wang Chuang, the chief director-designer of the Tianwen-1 probe with the CAST.

“At the hovering stage, the six instruments on board the rover, including microwave sensors to determine speed and distance and optical cameras, were started simultaneously in order to ‘search for a safer’ spot for the soft landing,” he explained.

Chinese space industry insiders told the Global Times on Saturday that although Tianwen-1 has inherited mature hovering and obstacle avoidance technology from the previous Chang’e-3,-4, and -5 lunar probe missions, there are still plenty of new challenges in its Mars landing attempt.

Currently, the success rate of humanity’s Mars landings is only below 50 percent, and most failed attempts happened at the EDL stage. “It took an extremely accurate operation of a range of technology, including aerodynamic shape design, parachute and engine, to achieve [the] soft landing on Mars. There is no room for defiance of even one second on any single system,” Sun Zezhou, the Tianwen-1 designer-in-chief with the CAST, noted.

Compared to the moon, Mars is first and foremost much further from Earth, which results in an inevitable communication delay of some 20 minutes. It means that Tianwen-1 is very much on its own in the landing process, CAST experts said.

Also, although the density of Mars’ atmosphere is only 1 percent of Earth’s atmosphere, it causes a more complicated environment for landing than a touchdown on the moon, as there is no atmosphere on the Earth’s closest celestial neighbor, they added.

“We did not have first-hand data on the Mars atmosphere… which means we were put in an entirely unknown environment. One can imagine the level of difficulty,” Chen Baichao, chief director-designer of the rover system with the CAST.

China has adopted a unique trajectory-elevation plan based on trim-wing design to resist the risks of uncertainty brought by the Mars atmosphere, according to the CAST.

Named after an ancient fire god of Chinese mythology, the 1.85-meter-tall and some 240-kilogram Zhurong Mars rover will then be deployed. It is designed to rove the planet for at least 3 Martian months, approximately 92 days on Earth.

In total, six scientific payloads – a pair of navigation and terrain cameras, a multispectral camera, a Mars surface composition detector, a penetrating radar, a mast-mounted magnetometer and a Mars climate station – were installed on Zhurong to study the topography, geology, soil structure, minerals and rock types and atmosphere in the area.

To survive the notoriously harsh sand storm on Mars’ surface, speed of which could reach 180 meters per second, about three times stronger than that of a super typhoon on Earth, Chinese engineers have developed a new material for Zhurong, enabling it to resist dust stains and shake off the dust, if any, by vibration.

Also, when the Mars rover encounters complicated situations on its drive path, Chinese scientists will conduct a simulation test on Earth with a 1:1 Zhurong model in the lab first, before they send instructions to the rover, Global Times learned from the CAST.

The technology used in the landing is based on China's successful human spaceflight and lunar missions, Andrew Jones, a Finland-based space observer who follows China's space industry, told the Global Times. "They haven't tested this altogether, but they have had the experience of dealing with these technologies."

What China is doing in the Tianwen-1 expedition is “extremely challenging and impressive,” said Jones.