Recently in China Category

A Long March 3B/E launch vehicle successfully launched Chinasat 2A at 1556 GMT from the Xichang launch site in China on 26 May 2011.   The communications satellite which is to be placed into Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) has a mass of 5,200kg.

According to a report on Chinadaily.com, there was some falling stage damage done to some houses and to a powerline.  Debris from the first stage of the vehicle damaged houses and a 10kV power line in the village of ShuanJiang in Suining County, Hunan Province, China. No casualties were reported.

Courtesy: BAE Systems

 

The UK Government has just reversed a decision on which type of F-35 fighter aircraft it wants for its new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers which are currently under construction.  Fearful of any costly development hitches over new technology electromagnetic catapults/traps, the government has decided to go back to the STOVL  "jump jet" F-35B version rather than having the longer range US Navy-style F-35C tail-hook/arrestor hook landing type.  

 

The decision has its dangers, not least because the costly-to-develop vertically landing F-35B might still be cancelled as it so nearly was in 2011.  In that event, the Royal Navy would be in the unhappy position of having aircraft carriers with no aircraft to fly off them, especially given that the UK's Ministry of Defence has already sold its remaining Harrier GR7 and GR9 strike bombers to the Americans.  

 

Is bringing the Sea Harrier out of retirement feasible in an emergency? 

 

Of course, the Royal Navy could try and dig its prematurely retired Sea Harriers out of their museums and engineering training establishments (the final FA-2 version of the Sea Harrier fighter was highly rated for its Blue Vixen radar/AMRAAM missile fit).  However, Ascend's analysis is that only about 10 to 12 of these could be restored to flying condition and that any such recovery could take several months.  Even this discounts all the ground and aircrew training that would be needed for such an emergency squadron resuscitation.

 

Whether the F-35B proves to be the right choice of carrier jet fighter or not, some critics are wondering if the United Kingdom needs aircraft carriers at all.  In recent newspaper and television interviews, Sir John Nott, who was the UK Defence Secretary at the time of the Falklands War in 1982, said he still did not think that the Royal Navy needed aircraft carriers.  His conclusion remains erroneous and even a little ungrateful, especially given that it was the same Sea Harrier-toting aircraft carriers that he had previously tried to scrap or sell off, which allowed the Falklands War to be won.

 

Carriers are very useful but they are vulnerable

 

While Sir John Nott and his fellow carrier critics are probably wrong about their utility, it has to be accepted that due to their size and military value, aircraft carriers do make very vulnerable and attractive targets.  Just as the one-time king of the seven seas, the battleship, was soon rendered impotent by the advent of carrier-borne dive-bombers and the threat of torpedos launched from aircraft and submarines, so the inheritor of the battleship's crown, the aircraft carrier, may soon find its own reign usurped by the arrival of a new weapon class:  diving anti-ship missiles.

 

After Exocet's lethality was demonstrated in the Falklands War, a lot of effort was put into developing missile and gun defences against Exocet-class sea-skimming anti-ship missiles and, most recently, against their satellite-targeted  supersonic successors (e.g. india's Brahmos missile).  However, now a very different kind of anti-ship missile is threating naval ships.  These are ballistic missiles which have been especially designed to make high velocity diving attacks "from the Gods".  

 

China and Iran are developing diving anti-ship missiles

 

An example of this new missile type is China's DF-21D which has been specifically designed to target US Navy aircraft carriers and deny them an operational position in close proximity to China's territory (or a disputed territory like Taiwan).  These missiles are thought to be remotely targeted,  using data-relayed target observations from China's Yaogan/Jianbing  radar and optical reconnaissance satellites, and from airborne reconnaissance aircraft, before  finally employing a sophisticated optical seeker for the terminal guidance of their final diving strikes. 

 

It is not just China that has worked on this type of anti-ship missile technology with aim of making an "area denial" to carriers.   Iran has boasted about its own shorter range ballistic diving missile system called Khalije Fars and has even had its official FARS news agency post images and footage of one of its successful missile tests - albeit that it hits an admittedly stationary target ship.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc7eUO1aw9M&feature=fvwrel

 

Nevertheless, while the technology is still relatively young, these ballistic diving missiles, once perfected, could mark the retirement of the carrier as a serious offensice weapons platform.   The US and Royal Navies have one hope for their carrier operations:  that is that  anti-ballistic missile systems carried by their carriers' escort vessels, such as the US Navy's Standard Missile SM-3 and Royal Navy's Aster 30 (Sea Viper), will be able to intercept such hostile missiles during their hypersonic approaches and supersonic terminal dives.  But they will have to do so without failure if their carriers are to survive.   

 

The answer:  Spread the risk and put F-35B jets on lots of ships

 

As the Battle of Midway showed during World War II, just a single strike on an aircraft carrier can be enough to change the odds in a sea battle, and with it the tide of a war. 

 

This factor plays to the STOVL advantages of the F-35B which can also be operated from smaller helicopter-class carriers and might even be flown off vessels that are not designed to be carriers at all.  For the more ships you have acting as "aircraft carriers", the less is the chance that you will "lose all your eggs in one basket" -  if you think that your "basket" might be hit by a missile that is.

 

 

 

China has launched the Yaogan 14 electro-optical military reconnaissance satellite into a near-polar sun- synchronous low Earth orbit on 10 May.   The launch took place at 0706 GMT, lifting off from the Taiyuan launch site.  The flight used a Long March 4B launch vehicle.   

Being launched with Yaogan 14 was a small science satellite called Tiantuo 1 (TT-1).  This satellite is officially for "scientific purposes" and was built by China's National University of Defence Technology (NUDT), based in Changsha, Hunan Province.  The university is reported to be under the supervision of China's Ministries of Defence and Education.

At 2050 on 29 April, a Chinese Long March 3B launched two Beidou spacecrat from Xichang using a new large fairing and a dual satellite adapter.  This is the first dual launch of two major payloads for the launch vehicle.   The satellites, Beidou 2C-M3 and Beidou 2C-M4 are part of the Chinese equivalent of the US GPS navigation satellite system albeit that users have to actively interrogate the system rather than receive signals passively as with GPS.

On 31 October, a Long March IIF launched from the Jiuquan launch site in western China. The successful launch carried a Shenzhou 8 capsule, which, though capable of carrying taikonauts, was empty.
On 2 November the capsule docked with Tiangong 1, a space station test bed, making China only the third nation to bring two spacecraft together in orbit (excluding international collaborations like Apollo-Soyuz and ISS).
Despite outwards congratulations from the US government, the general reaction to China's spacefaring has largely been one of suspicion (and occasionally outright hostility). Not that the US government as a whole is afraid of China, but there is enough to drive policy towards exclusion.

Take as an example the recent Congressional hearing, in which Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), to name one, is vociferous in denouncing any collaboration with China, despite that such collaboration is already legally banned. The result is that NASA is barred from sharing innocuous data with the Chinese government, or even meeting with Chinese representatives. Another result is that China is banned from docking with the ISS -- possibly not a deciding factor but certainly an influence on the Chinese decision to build a competing space station, which should be finished by 2020, the year that ISS is due to deorbit.

Bob Bigelow, speaking at ISPCS in Las Cruces, gave a controversial talk in which he posited that China is preparing to lay claim to much of the moon and Mars. His solution is to get there and lay claim first.

One might be reminded of the Red Scare from the Cold War, when any Soviet move was an escalation, and so was any potentially adverse move by anyone else, for that matter. The US reaction resulted in both positive (landing on the moon, rapid technical development) and negative (nuclear bombers on alert, several wars); in any case, in retrospect it often turned out to be a serious overreaction, and sometimes provocation. The Soviets did this as well, believing they were under essentially the same threat we believed ourselves to be under.

There are opportunities for collaboration, for trust-building measures that the US is wilfully ignoring. Competition can be a great thing, but too much competition and the results play out in other areas. In scientific and economic realms, US institutions are busy forging bonds in China that affect the policy of both governments. Space can be a unique, mutually beneficial stage for collaboration or geopolitical trust-building measures; instead it is currently a measure of distrust and fear. China is not an enemy on the scale of the Soviet Union, nor really even a peer competitor. It is puzzling that so many people seem to believe otherwise.

 

Russia Today is reporting that photos of the Moon taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter clearly show Lunokhod-2 the rover that landed on the celestial body in 1973 as part of the Soviet space programme. Good to know the Soviet space programme wasn't a hoax either then

Meanwhile the Russian Federal Space Agency (aka Roscosmos) is reporting on its website confirmation from prime minister Vladimir Putin of the Russian-Indian joint mission, that we reported back in July 2008, although it seems the mission will not now go to the International Space Station

Roscosmos is also reporting that the ISS partners are ready to co-operate with third parties and Cina is cited. India is also an obvious space faring nation that could be involved which makes the non-ISS Soyuz flight a bit of a mystery

In the run up to the launch of Soyuz TMA-18 Roscosmos talks about the 12 emergency landing sites outside Russia and Kazakhstan that there are, who knew there were so many? and for media there si an opportuntiy to drink tea at a tea party with cosmonauts and astronauts about to go to the ISS

While this report about Roscosmos Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency discussions about what must be the Bepi Colombo Mercury mission is somewhat hard to read but seems to suggest the Russians might get onboard this project, which has had some budgetary trouble in the past due to technical troubles

The Samaar Space Center Soyuz 2-1b rocket is about to get some new technology care of Khrunichev Space Center subsidiary Voronezh Mechanical Factory which Roscosmos says is to invent a new steering engine, the RD-0110R, the 2-1b flight control system

Finally Roscosmos had a board meeting recently

India's test of a new rocket engine had to be stopped early according to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) while Aviation Week's Beijing correspondent Bradley Perrett scores a scoop with Chinese Moon rocket planning

Talking to the Chinese in October last year in Korea it was clear that manned Moon mission planning was at a very early stage. Now they seem to have scoped out broadly what they want and its surprising that they are seeking a Moon rocket with less capabilty than NASA's Saturn V

What is more interesting for the nearer term is the Long March 6. It sounds like the European Space Agency's Vega, a solid rocket motor based vehicle for small payloads. The Long March 5, which comes into operation around 2015, was described to this blogger years ago by a China National Space Administation official as being just like Europe's Ariane 5. So one has to conclude that the Chinese are following the same launcher family logic as the western Europeans

The Indians, despite the engine setback, are still planning big things and this article talks about Avatar, the country's concept reusable launch vehicle not the 3D movie, and ISRO's chief talks up a fantastic future out to 2050 here 

Res Communis has reported on a presentation on prospects for space tourism in China by a Ms. Xu Si from the Beijing Institute of Technology - very probably an institution heavily involved in the space programme

I wrote for Flightglobal back in 2007 that China's government was looking at more commercial aspects for its space programme. One change that was seen was the selling of tickets to allow people to watch launches at the launch site

In April 2009 I interviewed China's manned space programme head Zhou Jianping and he said that Tiangong-1 would be launched at the end of 2010. That should have rung bells that 2011 was a more likely date. Whenever aerospace organisations say the end of anything it always means the following month or year. Now we have Chinese state media reports that its docking target cum autonomous space laboratory called Tiangong will launch in 2011

The China manned space engineering programme deputy general designer Wang Zhonggui told this blogger in Korea last October that there would be up to three Tiangong modules launched. The Tiangong missions are a stepping stone to the autonomous docking of space station modules for the outpost the country expects to have operating in 2020

China is not in any hurry with its space programme and no doubt there will be more delays but eventually it will have its own space station and more. The interesting question for the near term is will China join the International Space Station programme?   

The Manchester, UK based-Museum of Science & Industry has teamed with the University of Manchester to exhibit a history of China's aerospace development including that country's space programme. Its press release says:

"[The University of Manchester] has worked with the Confucius Institute to develop partnership arrangements with a number of science-based organisations in China, and The China Space Programme Exhibition is a result of this."

but don't worry you appear to have plenty of time, even if you're visiting the UK from overseas 

The China Space Programme, which runs from 30 January to 7 August 2010 in [Museum of Science & Industry's] Air & Space Hall, includes models of ancient rockets, as well as recent satellites (including the Donfanghong series), rockets (including the Long March series), space ships and a lunar rover.

Its time again for a whirlwind roundup of various news items from around the internet beginning with Space News' Galileo satellite navigation system scoop

Hyperbola hears that the actual announcement on who won what will be made on or around 23 December, next week basically. While Space News talks of Germany's OHB Systems winning eight of the 22 spacecraft to be ordered Hyperbola can understand why Astrium, with all the built in costs such a large company has to address, might not be too happy at any outcome starting with the reduction in spacecraft from 28 to 22

Talking of Europeans the head of the European Space Agency's Earth Observation programmes visit to China is a feature on the China National Space Administration (CNSA) website which is rather scant on detail on what China, ESA coperation in this area actually means. On the rarely updated CNSA website there is also news of a signing of a two-year China, Russia space co-operation deal, again with little detail on what that means - docking and rendezvous help perhaps?

And talking of Russians, that country's spacecraft company Energia is preparing for the 20 December launch of Soyuz TMA-17, go here for more photos of the astronaut, cosmonaut training.  Meanwhile there is a documentary movie apparently of Anousheh Ansari's Soyuz trip to the International Space Station, more details can be found here at Romanian space advocacy group ARCA's website along with info on a school's space related painting workshop

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency gives an update on its solar sail spacecraft Ikaros, which it compares with the US Planetary Society's Lightsail-1, while Aabar Investment is taking a long term view of its interest in space tourism

Point to point is not going to be with us for a good twenty years simply because of the time it will take, assuming space tourism is successful, to draw in the hundreds of millions of dollars of private investment needed to solve the technology issues of propulsion and thermal protection - not to mention necessary international regulatory issues

But what a point to point suborbital vehicle is unlikely to use is an inflatable heat shield, which NASA is intending to fly again and has just released the draft statement of work for. Another NASA procurement is to examine the feasibility of what could be one element of the Augustine report's flexible path - lagrange point space telescope servicing by astronauts