China May Put Its First Woman In Space

The steady upward march of China’s space program continued this weekend with the move of a Long March 2F rocket to the launch pad (left) for preparation for the dispatch of a manned Shenzhou-9 spacecraft to dock with China’s orbiting space station module, Tiangong-1, later this month. The unmanned Shenzhou-8 docked with Tiangong-1 last November, China’s first space docking.

There is speculation that the three-person team of astronauts aboard Shenzhou-9 will include what would be China’s woman in space. Two female PLA-Air Force pilots joined the space program in 2010. Both were included in the initial roster of seven astronauts for the Shenzhou-9 flight that was picked in March. The final flight crew and back-ups are in training, but has not yet been announced. Unnamed officials have been quoted as saying it includes a woman. (Update: state media confirm that one of the two will be in the flight crew.)

Docking of spacecraft is a critical skill to master as China races to catch-up with the other space powers. Amid the fanfare about the progress of China’s space program, it is worth recalling that the U.S., for example, first docked spacecraft nearly half a century ago, in 1966.

The Men On The Moon

The call by Newt Gingrich, the American politician who is seeking the Republican party’s presidential nomination, for the U.S. to establish a Moon base “by the end of my second term”, which, if it happens, would be 2020, throws down a gauntlet to China’s ambitious space program. “It is clearly in [the U.S.’s] interest,” he said, to acquire so much experience in space that we clearly have a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere near to matching.”

China’s space scientists have nursed a long-term ambition to establish a lunar base for at least a couple of decades. Gradually, the reality of the country’s space program is catching up. An unmanned mission to the Moon is planned for next year. The recently published white paper on China’s space program publicly confirmed for the first time the scarcely secret goal of following that with a manned mission. It was vague about timing, saying only that the tasks for the next five years include conducting “studies on the preliminary plan for a human lunar landing”.

As recently as a couple of years ago, space officials were talking about that happening in 2025 to 2030, but more recently 2025 is being mentioned as a by-the-latest date rather than as an at-the-earliest one, with a Moon base to follow by 2030. That coincidentally is the date Japan has pencilled in for setting up a manned Moon base.

Whether the Chinese, even if they got there before the Japanese (or the Russians who have similar ambitions), would now find the Americans already there is the new question. Certainly, if Americans put their minds to it they could pull it off, just as an earlier generation responded to President John F. Kennedy’s call in the face of the Soviet Union putting a man in orbit around the Earth to, within a decade, land an American on the Moon and bring him home. Whether Americans today have the optimism and the money is another matter.

NASA has Bush-era plans it can dust off, plans the Obama administration scaled back because of cost. Some U.S. legislators have called for NASA astronauts to return to the Moon for first time since 1972 by 2022. Gingrich proposes to involve the private sector, including in the development of space tourism and manufacturing, and to spur innovation and technological breakthroughs with both civilian and military applications. Yet eight years would be a tight deadline to pull off a mission of such complexity, regardless of how neatly it dovetails with election-campaign rhetoric. For one, a heavy lift rocket would have to be developed.

There is also the little matter of Gingrich both being nominated to run and then winning the Presidency. President Obama has expressed more interest in going to Mars than returning to the Moon.

The space world has long debated the relative scientific value of manned versus unmanned space exploration and whether returning to the Moon is a diversion from a grander goal of interplanetary travel. One alternative to having humans living on the Moon, or perhaps a first step towards that, would be to establish an unmanned lunar base. While that could be an adjunct to the International Space Station, Japan’s space agency has a plan to have a small but permanent automated base on the Moon run by humanoid robots by 2020. What odds China’s space officials are now looking at what more they could do with the robots they are planning to send to the Moon in 2017 to gather lunar samples if they left some behind?

China’s Moon Dreams

That a long-term ambition of Beijing’s space program is to put a Chinese on the Moon has been as badly a kept secret as the PLA-Navy’s wish to establish a carrier fleet. This Bystander noted in 2010, as China launched its second lunar probe, intended to test technologies that will allow it to land and return an unmanned mission on the Moon in 2013 (see artists impression below), that 2025 to 2030 had been pencilled in for a manned flight. The recently published white paper on China’s space program publicly confirms the goal but adds nothing to the potential timing, saying only that the tasks for the next five years include conducting “studies on the preliminary plan for a human lunar landing”.

Only a dozen people, all Americans, have put foot on the Moon. The most recent were there in December 1972. Like the U.S. and the old Soviet Union before it, China sees its space program as both fostering the development of advanced technologies for military and civilian use, and as a statement of its emergence as a world power. The illustration above from state media suggests that China’s space scientists may have more than dreams of just getting one of their countrymen to the Moon and back again dancing in their heads.

Critical Next Step For China’s Space Program

When China sent up the first building block of its space station in September, it was always the case that the second module wouldn’t be far behind. Shenzhou-8 will get blasted off on Tuesday to join–if all goes well–the unmanned space laboratory, Tiangong-1, already in orbit. (Update: the launch was successful; docking is planned for no later than Thursday. Done. Check). Shenzhous -9 and -10 are to follow next year. The drawing above is a representation of what the space station will look like once it is fully assembled. The part closest to the bottom left looks like a Shenzhou module.

Chinese space launches are now routine, but docking in space is new for its space program, and a critical skill to master as it races to catch-up with the other space powers. The U.S., for example, first docked spacecraft in 1966. It will take a decade for the space station to be built out fully and astronauts are likely to be aboard from next year. But none of that will be possible without successful docking in space. This docking is running six months behind its original schedule, but China’s space engineers, who will be orchestrating the docking from the ground, know how important it is to get this essential step right–so essential that they will perform the operation twice on this mission, docking, then undocking and docking again.

State media is again giving the docking great fanfare.

China Starts Space Station Build

China’s space program has taken another step forward with the launch of the first building block of a space station. A Long March rocket carrying an unmanned space laboratory, Tiangong-1, was sent into space from the Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert on Thursday evening. The photo above shows the craft blasting off. If the laboratory is placed into orbit successfully, a second module will be sent up in a couple of weeks to dock with it. Astronauts will follow next year. It will take a decade for the space station to be built out fully.

China was late into space – the U.S. first docked spacecraft in 1966 – but it is determinedly playing catch up. Like the U.S. and the old Soviet Union before it, China sees its space program as both fostering the development of advanced technologies for military and civilian use, and as a statement of its emergence as a world power. Witness the fact that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and fellow Politburo member He Guoqiang were in the Jiuquan command center for the launch while President Hu Jintao and six other members of the Politburo, including Hu’s assumed successor, Xi Jinping, watched the blast-off from the space program’s flight control center in Beijing.

State media is giving the latest launch a suitable fanfare.

Upward And Onward For China’s Space Program

In the latest stage of its ambitious space program, China has launched its second Moon probe, this one intended to test technologies that will allow it to land an unmanned mission on the Moon in 2013. The Chang’e 2 probe sits atop a Long March 3C rocket that took off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan and is expected to reach lunar orbit in five days. One of its tasks will be to photograph and map the Moon’s surface for possible landing sites for a robotic rover.

China is one of an elite group of three that has put a man in space. It has launched three manned space flights since the first in 2003. Though its space program got off to a slow start and is running behind its original timetable, it is making up for lost time. Putting a Chinese on the Moon is a goal for sometime between 2025 and 2030. Like the U.S. and the old Soviet Union before it, China sees its space program as both fostering the development of advanced technologies for military and civilian use, and as a statement of its emergence as a world power.

Qian Xuesen, Rocket Scientist, Dies

But for a twist of history, Qian Xuesen, whose death at age 98 was announced Saturday, might be being remembered as another immigrant rocket scientist who had made a significant contribution to America’s space technology rather than as the father of China’s space program.

After graduating form Jiao Tong University in 1934, Qian studied on a scholarship at at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later the California Institute of Technology where he obtained a doctorate in 1939. He would be at Caltech for two decades, helping to set up the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and ultimately becoming Goddard Professor. He was regarded as one of the leading rocket scientists in America and had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb in World War II, but when he applied for U.S. citizenship in the 1950s he fell victim to the McCarthyite anti-communist fever sweeping America at the time and was deported, returning to China in 1955.

Working for the defense ministry, he set up China’s first missile and rocket research institute. His subsequent research helped lead to the successful explosion of China’s first atomic bomb in 1964, to its first man-made satellite in 1970 and to its first manned spacecraft in 2003. (Xinhua‘s obituary.) History’s mischief is the law of unintended consequences.

China Crash Lands Lunar Probe As Space Industry Drives Ahead

Chang’e 1, China’s first lunar probe, has been crash landed on the moon, state media reports. But Chang’e 2 will make a soft landing and Chang’e 3 return home.

That is the three-phase plan for the moon mission that started with Chang’e 1’s launch in October 2007. Chang’e 3 is expected to be launched in 2017 and will collect mineral samples. Chang’e 1 provided a survey of the entire surface of the moon. Its controlled crash to end its mission was about testing China’s ability to fly a moon probe by remote control. Landing a man on the moon remains a long-term objective, but no date for that has been made public.

The next important goal for China’s ambitious space plan is the launch of a space module next year, with a space docking in 2011 as the first steps towards building an orbiting space station.  All of which means plenty of work for the country’s growing aerospace industry and a boost for the development of its rocket technology.

Shenzhou VII Flies Home, Airline Passengers Wait

With the Shenzhou VII mission safely and jubilantly returned to Earth, the FT reports how China’s air traffic controllers grounded civil airliners for the launch of the mission without notice, only the latest sudden and unexplained delay to flights by the Civil Aviation Administration of China when the PLA wants clear skies.

Xinhua Spaces Out

Xinhua’s web site ran a detailed report Thursday on the successful launch of the Shenzhou 7 space mission,  including snatches of dialogue between the astronauts. Only problem was the story was posted hours before lift off. An Associated Press report on the snafu. And another on the actual successful launch is here.