China's Space Program News Thread

China's CALT Aims To Fly Proposed Long March 9 Moon Rocket By 2030
Jun 12, 2017 | Aerospace Daily & Defense Report




BEIJING—China’s main space launcher builder has loosened the schedule for flying a super-heavy rocket, leaving open the possibility of launching the first unit at least two years later than previously planned.

But the launcher, needed for proposed manned lunar landings by 2031-36, could also fly a little before the previously stated target of 2028, a senior manager of the state enterprise, CALT, implies.

Payload to low Earth orbit has risen to 140 metric tons from the 130 metric tons targeted in 2013 studies, but this improved performance is not expected to result in more mass hurled to lunar transfer orbit. For that, the target is still 50 metric tons, says the manager, Lu Yu, director of CALT’s science and technology committee.

“We are mainly talking about a first flight around 2028-30,” Lu told reporters at the Global Space Exploration Conference here. “The rocket is for deep space missions and especially for setting up a lunar base for manned missions.”

CALT is working on key technology for Long March 9 in anticipation of approval for full-scale development. This work is focusing on developing engines vastly larger than anything China has so far built and on fabricating structure of the great diameter that will be needed, another Chinese space industry official says.

The first core stage will probably have a diameter of 10 meters (33 ft.), that official says. That would be twice the diameter of the core first stage of Long March 5, China’s largest rocket to date. Difficulties in fabricating the 5-meter dia. structure delayed Long March 5’s first flight.

In a conference presentation, Lu showed a design for Long March 9, perhaps just a concept, with 24 thrust chambers for liftoff thrust. If engines with dual thrust chambers are planned, as seems likely, then the design will have 12 engines at liftoff: four in the core first stage and two in each of four boosters.

The color coding of the drawing implies that these engines would burn kerosene with liquid oxygen.

The second stage has two thrust chambers—perhaps for two engines—that would apparently burn hydrogen with liquid oxygen, a conventional choice. The third stage had the same arrangement.

Notably absent from the design were solid-propellant boosters, which China has been working on for this project. In earlier designs, CALT engineers restricted each concept to two propellant combinations: liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen with either kerosene and liquid oxygen or solid propellants at liftoff. The latest concept conforms to that rule.

But it is quite possible that CALT is also still considering a design for solid-propellant boosters on a completely hydrogen-fueled core.

2030 for Long March 9 is disappointingly far away. I still have hope that the published schedules for Chinese space activities are deliberately conservative in order to delay the inevitable nationalistic surge response from the USA.

taxiya said:

So far, the first stage of Chinese rocket all land inside Chinese land. The reuse is only about first stage. So it is not an issue for now.

However, land recovery does have its own challenge because the landing zones (of first stage) of Xichang site are mountainous.

Recovering first stage and boosters of CZ-5 (launched from Hainan towards sea) would present the sea water issue that you mentioned. But the problem may not be a big concern, salt is not acid and aluminum is pretty good in resisting salt unlike steel. And they don't stay in sea water for long, within one hour perhaps.

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Thanks for the information. My concern is that when the concept is to re-use the first stage up to 50 times, even relatively minor challenges such as immersion in sea water, or shock from low-velocity impact with unpredictable terrain, could impose costs/compromises at the design stage, or with maintenance procedures to re-certify for the next flight, such that uncontrolled parachute descent imposes greater overall costs than it appears. While powered descent as practiced by SpaceX may impose greater initial performance penalty, there is full control over where the stage lands and no such environmental challenges to account for.

Yes really far away. I do hope they speed things up. China's space program has been too slow I feel. According to the article, there still has not been approval for full-scale development. From Chinese sources, the scientists seems to be itching to get on with the eventual manned lunar program but central government seems to be reluctant to give approval.

Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope HXMT launched

China launches space telescope to search for black holes, pulsars


JIUQUAN, June 15 (Xinhua) -- China launched its first X-ray space telescope to observe black holes, pulsars and gamma-ray bursts, via a Long March-4B rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gobi Desert at 11 a.m. Thursday.

The 2.5-tonne Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), dubbed Insight, was sent into an orbit of 550 kilometers above the earth to help scientists better understand the evolution of black holes, and the strong magnetic fields and the interiors of pulsars.

Through the telescope, scientists will also study how to use pulsars for spacecraft navigation, and search for gamma-ray bursts corresponding to gravitational waves.

The result of the wisdom and efforts of several generations of Chinese scientists, Insight is expected to push forward the development of space astronomy and improve space X-ray detection technology in China.

Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope HXMT (2,5t) is launched by a CZ4B:

According to a report in the

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, the potatoes will be sealed inside a "mini ecosystem" as part the Chang'e-4 mission due to launch next year. They'll be sharing a small cylinder on the surface of the Earth's only natural satellite with silkworm larvae as part of a series of experiments, Professor Xie Gengxin of Chongqing University told the paper.

The goal is to see whether the insects and spuds will survive on the lunar surface, and the end result will yield important insights about the viability of a future human colony,

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says.

Potatoes played a central part in the 2015 science fiction film The Martian, based on the book by Andy Weir, where Matt Damon plays an astronaut stranded on Mars, resorting to potato farming in order to survive.

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A step forward in manned space lab deployment
Life is not easy they have to invent every technology themselves and it is expensive too
The Chinese cargo ship TZ-1 completed the 2nd in-orbit refueling test with the TG-2 laboratory.

China's quantum satellite clears major hurdle on way to ultrasecure communications
Probe sends entangled photons — which could underpin quantum-based data encryption — over unprecedented distance.

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15 June 2017

Just months into its mission,

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has achieved one of its most ambitious goals.

Researchers report in Science

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that, by beaming photons between the satellite and two distant ground stations, they have shown that photons can remain in a linked quantum state at a record-breaking distance of more than 1,200 kilometres. That phenomenon, known as

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, could be used as the basis of a future secure quantum-communications network.

The feat is the first result reported from China’s Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS) mission, also known as Micius after an ancient Chinese philosopher. Launched last August, the craft is designed to demonstrate principles underlying quantum communication. The team is likely to launch more quantum-enabled satellites to start building a network.

Quantum communication is secure because any interference is detectable. Two parties can exchange secret messages by sharing an encryption key encoded in the properties of entangled particles; any eavesdropper would affect the entanglement and so be detected.

The Micius team has already done experiments exploring whether it is possible to create such encryption keys using entangled photons, and even

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, says

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, a physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and the main architect of the probe. But he says that his team is not yet ready to announce the results.

Bell test
In theory, entangled particles should remain linked at any separation. That can be checked using a

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.

Central to QUESS's experiments is a laser beam mounted on the satellite. For the

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, the beam was split to generate pairs of photons that share a common quantum state, in this case related to polarization. The entangled photons were funnelled into two onboard telescopes that fired them at separate stations on the ground: one in Delingha, on the northern Tibetan Plateau, and the other 1,203 kilometres south, at Gaomeigu Observatory in Lijiang. Once the particles arrived, the team used the Bell test to confirm that they were still entangled.

The researchers had a window of less than 5 minutes each night when the satellite, which orbits at an altitude of about 500 kilometres, was in view of both observatories. Within weeks of launch, they were able to transmit a pair of entangled photons per second — a rate ten times faster than they had hoped. The crucial experiment was completed before the end of the year, says Pan: “We are very happy that the whole system worked properly.” The previous record for such an experiment was 144 kilometres

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.

“This proves that one can perform quantum communications at continental distances,” says Frédéric Grosshans, a quantum-communications physicist at the University of Paris South in Orsay. Entangled particles are the “workhorse” of quantum communications, he adds.

Next-generation satellite
“I am really impressed by the result of the Chinese group,” says Wolfgang Tittel, a physicist at the University of Calgary in Canada. “To me, it was not clear after the satellite launch if they would succeed,” he says, or whether they would use it to learn for the next improved mission.

Pan says that in addition to the quantum-key and teleportation experiments, the team also plans to use Micius to test how gravity affects the quantum state of photons. And they want to launch a second, improved, quantum satellite in two years. A major challenge, he says, will be to upgrade the technology so that it can send and receive signals during the day, when there are many more photons around and it is harder to pick out the ones coming from the satellite.

For now, Pan feels vindicated about the first spacecraft’s design. Colleagues thought that it was too ambitious, he says, because it produced the entangled photons in space and required two photon-firing systems.

Similar missions in the planning stages — such as Canada’s Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite (QEYSSat) — use a simpler approach, creating the entangled photons on Earth and beaming them to a satellite. In a study

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published last week, the QEYSSat team reported a successful test of its technology, transmitting photons from the ground to an aircraft as much as 10 kilometres in the air.

Thomas Jennewein, who is at the University of Waterloo in Canada and part of the Candanian mission, says that his group and others around the world are now racing to catch up with the Chinese effort. “They are now clearly the world leader in quantum satellites,” he says.

Nature
doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22142

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Funding For Chinese Deep-Space Program Nears Approval
Jupiter features in Chinese program to explore beyond Moon
Jun 16, 2017 | Aviation Week & Space Technology


China’s key space exploration program is aimed at the Moon, with a sample-return mission planned for this year and a historic landing on the far side in 2018. But the country’s space program managers are looking far beyond Earth’s natural satellite.

A program for deep-space exploration up to 2030 is close to receiving budgetary approval, says a senior program official. Among the three planned destinations for the missions, Mars and asteroids present no major new requirements in launcher and spacecraft bus technology, says the official, Li Chunlai. The third destination is the Jovian system.

The deep-space exploration program was outlined last year, but Li gave details in an address on June 6 to the Global Space Exploration Conference in Beijing, organized by the International Astronautical Federation and the Chinese Society of Astronautics.




The general objectives of the robotic exploration effort are to study the origins of the Solar System, the possibility of extraterrestrial life and dangers to Earth from the Sun and small astronomical bodies, says Li. The plan covers the next 13 years. It has not received a budget allocation, but Li says it should soon. He declines to give further details on the funding process.

For Mars the aim is to achieve remote (meaning orbital) sensing, a soft landing and a sample return. The Chinese intend to explore their landing sites and study soil, the atmosphere, water distribution, Martian geology and its evolution.

China said last year it would send its first mission to Mars in 2020. Li, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is the program’s deputy chief designer. He says the orbiter for the first mission will carry medium- and high-resolution cameras, a subsurface exploration radar, mineral spectrometer, magnetometer and analyzers for energetic ion and neutral particles. The rover will carry topography cameras, a multispectral camera, subsurface radar, a package of instruments for analyzing surface composition, a magnetic field observation station and a climate station.

Several missions to asteroids are evidently on the agenda, but the number is not stated. China plans to send spacecraft that will fly by them, fly in company, attach to them and return samples back to Earth. It wants to “measure the physical parameters of target asteroids, such as orbital elements, parameters and size, try to assess the possibilities of near-Earth asteroids striking Earth and provide information for avoiding the impact,” Li says.

Asteroids would themselves be studied for clues to their evolution and such features as internal structure, possible organic matter and space weathering. China’s effort will extend to studying the magnetosphere of Jupiter and the surface, geologic structure and space environment of its satellite Ganymede, whose ice layer will be a particular subject of observation. All this will be done from orbit.

The Chinese engineers intend to use gravity assist from Venus and Earth and to study solar wind and interplanetary magnetic fields. Again, the number of missions is not stated.

For landing on the far side of the Moon next year, engineers list navigation and landing stability among their main challenges. Others are coping with –180C (–290F) temperatures during long lunar nights and designing the relay satellite that will be needed to link the lander with Earth, program engineer Zhang He told the conference in Beijing.

The Chang’e 4 mission will use a lander and rover repurposed from their original function as backups for the Chang’e 3 mission of 2013. Because of the change in objectives, Chang’e 4 will fly out of numerical sequence, behind the sample-return mission, Chang’e 5.

If Chang’e 4 is successful, it will be the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the Moon, which permanently faces away from Earth and therefore imposes the requirement for a relay satellite.

Scientific payloads for the lander could include a low-frequency radio spectrometer, an infrared spectrometer, a panoramic camera and a radar, Zhang told the conference.

The ruggedness of the far side increases the challenge of a landing. “Due to the complex terrain of the far side, it is difficult to find . . . a large flat area,” says Zhang, whose organization, China Academy of Space Technology, is developing the spacecraft.

So the lander will have to use a small flat area and must therefore maneuver precisely in its descent to that spot. To achieve that precision, the lander’s 7.5-kN (1,700-lb.) thrust engine will be calibrated in space, Zhang says.

Navigation algorithms of Chang’e 4 must also be adjusted to cope with the great topographical relief of the far side. Range and velocity sensors will need to achieve higher signal-to-noise ratios, due to the low microwave backscatter of the surface.

The small relay satellite will be launched six months ahead of the lander and rover and orbit around the Earth-Moon second Lagrange point, which is beyond the Moon. There it will have lines of sight to the lander and mission ground stations.

Big Rocket, Multiple Launches Among China’s Moonshot Choices
China reveals some of its thinking for a Moon landing
Jun 16, 2017 | Aviation Week & Space Technology


Building an enormous rocket is one way to get to the Moon, and the Chinese, penciling a manned lunar mission for the 2030s, may well choose that option. But the possibility of launching the equipment in several shots and assembling the pieces in space also seems to be under study.

Preliminary work is underway on the super-heavy launcher, on a schedule that now has been loosened. The mighty rocket, if developed, could fly in 2028 as previously targeted, or maybe two years later, says a senior manager of the country’s leading builder of space launchers, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT).

The alternative of using a series of launches has been raised and still appears to be an option as Wu Yansheng, head of CALT parent China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), exhibited such a concept as part of a speech to the Global Space Exploration Conference held in Beijing on June 6-8.

China’s Moon Mission
Early work is underway
Full-scale development has not been approved
The missions would be launched in the 2030s
A Moon rocket, if built, could fly in 2028–30

For the super-heavy rocket, payload to low Earth orbit has risen to 140 metric tons (310,000 lb.) from the 130 metric tons targeted in studies published in 2013. But this improved performance is not expected to result in more mass hurled to the Moon. For that, the target is still 50 metric tons, says the CALT manager, Lu Yu, director of the state enterprise’s science and technology committee.

“We are mainly talking about a first flight around 2028–30,” Lu tells reporters at the conference. “The rocket is for deep-space missions and especially for setting up a lunar base for manned missions.”

CALT is working on key technology for Long March 9 in anticipation of approval for full-scale development. This work is focusing on developing engines vastly larger than anything China has built and on fabricating a structure of the great diameter that will be needed, says another Chinese space industry official.

The first core stage probably will have a diameter of 10 m (33 ft.), that official predicts. That would be twice the diameter of the core first stage of Long March 5, China’s largest rocket to date. Difficulties in fabricating the 5-m-dia. structure delayed Long March 5’s first flight, which occurred in 2016.

In a presentation, Lu showed a design for Long March 9, perhaps just a concept, with 24 thrust chambers for liftoff thrust. Engines with dual thrust chambers evidently are planned, so the design probably has 12 engines at liftoff: four in the core first stage and two in each of four boosters. The color coding of the drawing implies that these engines will burn kerosene with liquid oxygen.

The second stage has two thrust chambers—perhaps for two engines—that apparently will burn hydrogen with liquid oxygen, a conventional choice. The third stage has the same arrangement.


Notably absent from the design are solid-propellant boosters, which China has been developing for this project. In earlier studies of design alternatives, CALT engineers restricted each concept to two propellant combinations: One would be liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and the other either solid or kerosene and liquid oxygen. The latest concept conforms to that rule.


CALT still could be considering a design with solid-propellant boosters on a completely hydrogen-fueled core, however. Large solid-propellant motors are under development and, according to the manager of that program, could be used for a big Moon rocket.

An alternative is to do without Long March 9 and instead send equipment up in three launches by smaller rockets. In the concept that Wu exhibited, the first launch would be executed by an unidentified rocket—big but not as big as Long March 9—that would hurl a lander directly to lunar orbit. Then another large rocket would place its own upper stage, not yet exhausted of fuel, and a “propulsion vehicle” in low Earth orbit.

Third, a smaller rocket, apparently a Long March 7, would launch the manned spacecraft consisting of propulsion, orbital and return (or reentry) modules. The astronauts would dock with the propulsion vehicle and upper stage, and the latter would send them toward the Moon and then be jettisoned. The propulsion vehicle would decelerate the spacecraft for lunar orbit and then be jettisoned. In lunar orbit, the crew would rendezvous with the lander.

The rest of the mission would be conventional: On return from the Moon, the lander would leave its descent stage behind. Returning to Earth, the crew successively would discard the lander, the propulsion module (distinct from the propulsion vehicle) and the orbital module.

However the Chinese propose to reach the Moon, they seem to have ambitious plans for the scale of what space industry managers are calling their Moon base. This is evident from preliminary work on a powerful variable-thrust engine.

The engine would generate 80 kn (18,000 lb.) of thrust, compared with the 45 kn of the TRW Lunar Module Descent Engine used in the U.S. Apollo program. The lander using that engine, the Lunar Module, had a mass of 15 metric tons.

The proposed variable-thrust engine was outlined at the conference by the Xian Aerospace Propulsion Institute, part of leading Chinese space program supplier CASC.

Propellants would be liquid oxygen and a hydrocarbon such as kerosene. Deep throttling, down to only 10% of maximum thrust, could be achieved in part by using two manifolds for propellant supply, shutting down one as necessary, according to the concept described at the conference by the institute’s Li Ping.

Such an engine should be developed for Chinese space exploration, Li said, suggesting funds are not yet allocated for the program. Still, Li’s thrust target presumably meets a preliminary requirement from lunar program designers that is based on the mass they want to land.

An engine with a wide thrust range is needed for precise control in landings on astronomical bodies. The institute’s engine is proposed for landing on Mars as well as the Moon.

The reference to a Moon base implies prolonged presence and therefore considerable size. Further, Long March 9’s throw weight to translunar injection, 50 metric tons, is enough to send an object somewhat larger than the U.S. lunar module to the Moon’s surface. Apollo’s lunar module and command and service modules had a combined mass of 44 metric tons.

The series of six unmanned probes that China began sending to the Moon in 2007 use a 7.5-kn variable-thrust engine that burns unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine with nitrogen tetroxide.

One was installed on each of the Chang’e 1, 2 and 3 probes and will be on Chang’e 4, which is due for launch next year. Chang’e 5 and 6, which will be larger, will have two of the engines. Chang’e 5 is due to be launched this year.