China's Space Plans

Last week, the Chinese government released a 17 page white paper document entitled, "China's Space Activities in 2011."  The paper is a brief summing up of the last five years in Chinese space activities, and a preview of what to expect in the next five year space program.  While the paper isn't mind blowing in its scope or material, it does touch on some interesting points.

The accomplishments of the Chinese space program have been impressive in the last five years, and the paper focuses on the most noteworthy achievements.  Since 2006, the Long March series of rockets, China's workhorse, has had 67 successful launches, making it one of the world's most reliable launch systems.  In 2007 and 2010, China launched Chang'e-1 and Chang'e-2, respectively, which marked the nation's first serious foray into deep space exploration.  Both spacecraft successfully orbited, mapped, and studied the Moon. In 2008, China successfully launched three men aboard Shenzhou-7, a mission that saw the country's first spacewalk.  And, most recently, China launched its first space lab, Tiangong-1, and successfully remotely docked a Shenzhou spacecraft with the orbiting lab.  The paper also mentions a few scientific accomplishments, like experiments in physics and materials sciences.

Chinese astronaut, Zhai Zhigang, waves to the camera during his 2007 spacewalk (BBC).

The paper goes on to lay out a general plan for China's space program for the next five years.  A continuation of the space lab program, in preparation for a full-fledged space station is highlighted.  This next year will see another unmanned docking with Tiangong-1, as well as one manned mission to the lab.  The Chinese lunar program will move forward as well, with a plan to do a soft landing, followed by a lunar rover, and culminating in a soil return mission.  China will also develop several new rockets in its Long March series, including a "heavy lift" variant which proposes to launch 25 tons into low Earth orbit.

Possible configurations of the proposed Long March 5 family of rockets (Jirka Dlouhy).

One of the surprising things about the document is how much emphasis is put on international cooperation.  Every international space agreement China has entered into is detailed, from commercial deals with the developing world, to multi-national science missions with Europe, to Russia's cooperation with China on their manned program.  This could be a sign that China is opening up more, and by highlighting the work they have already conducted with other nations, they hope to cozy up to bigger space partners (maybe the US?).

Not surprisingly, there are some inconsistencies with what the Chinese government says, and what it does.  The paper highlights China's efforts to mitigate and track space debris.  However, in 2007 the Chinese tested an anti-satellite weapon, destroying one of their own aging weather satellites.  This incident created over 2,300 pieces of trackable space debris.  While this stunt may have demonstrated China's satellite killing ability to the world, it created more space debris than any other single event in history.  Debris from this incident has already threatened the ISS once, and will continue to be a problem for all space faring nations decades to come.

Propaganda aside, China is indeed pushing forward in all aspects of their space program, and this latest document is an interesting glimpse of where China is headed in space.  Let's hope they keep to their commitment of greater international cooperation, an increase in space science, and a reduction in dangerous space debris.

Read the full text of the white paper, here.

New Moon Map

This week, scientists released the best topographical map of the Moon ever created.  The new map, which covers 98.2 percent of the Moon's surface, gives detailed topo information down to the 100 meter scale.  This is an impressive feat that could only have been accomplished with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

The new, detailed, topographic map of the moon (NASA Goddard).

LRO, launched in 2009 and costing a little over $500 million, has been a resounding success.  In addition to the camera and on board altimeter that helped create the new topographic map, LRO has a number of other high-tech devices; the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment (DLRE) has created a thermal map of the Lunar surface, while the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) is helping to determine how detrimental cosmic rays might be to biological organisms on the Moon's surface.

The completion of this map comes at an opportune time.  Early next year, NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft will arrive in lunar orbit, and create the most accurate gravity map of the Moon to date.  This combination of topographical, thermal, and gravity mapping will give scientists truly new insights into all aspects of the Moon's formation and subsequent development.

It's good to see that while NASA's manned program is shifting away from the Moon toward asteroids and Mars, a healthy robotic exploration of the Moon continues.  And it isn't just NASA that shows continued interest in the Moon.  As I've discussed before, China has distant plans to land human beings on the Moon - and while that might be a while off, they have launched two orbiters to our natural satellite, Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2, as part of their own robotic exploration program.  India, also, launched and operated the highly successful Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in orbit around the Moon.

There are also a number of private companies and individuals showing interest in lunar exploration.  Bigelow Aerospace wants to build inflatable habitats on the surface of the Moon to compliment their planned inflatable orbital station.  Shackleton Energy is looking into the possibility of extracting hydrogen and oxygen from the lunar surface, processing it into fuel, and building a fuel depot in lunar orbit.  And the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million contest to put a rover on the Moon, has some serious entries from cutting edge engineering teams from across the nation.  These are all ambitious plans, but the greater number of entities interested and involved in lunar exploration, the more the cost will come down, and the greater the chances of success of one or more of these projects.

Artist's rendition of a Bigelow Aerospace lunar base (Bigelow Aerospace).

Lunar exploration will go forward, and NASA's continued remote exploration of our closest neighbor will be absolutely vital.  My hope is that lunar programs don't lose steam with the coming robotic and manned explorations of other bodies in the solar system.

China Succeeds in Orbital Docking

Chalk up another high profile success for the Chinese Space Program.  Earlier today, the unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft successfully docked with China's first orbiting space lab, Tiangong-1.  This docking was performed automatically, which means there was no human control over either spacecraft during the last 50 kilometers of approach.  An impressive feat, by any standards.

Chinese television documented the automated link-up (CNTV/CCTV).

Shenzhou-8 will spend the next 12 days docked to Tiangong-1.  The spacecraft will then undock, and then re-dock to prove all systems are functioning properly.  After spending two more days attached, the two craft will separate for the last time, and Shenzhou-8 will head back to Earth.  China plans on sending two more Shenzhou spacecraft to dock with the orbiting lab, one of which will carry a crew of three taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) for a short stay aboard Tiangong-1.

Artist's conception of the Shenzhou-8/Tiangong-1 docking.

With this automated docking, China takes another step on its ambitious path of space exploration.  What makes this even more impressive is that only a handful of nations have accomplished this task.  The US, Russia, Japan, and the European Space Agency have all developed this technology on their own, and each has successfully sent craft to the International Space Station.  Now that China has demonstrated its ability to dock spacecraft automatically in orbit, it will be possible for the construction of a full-fledged Chinese space station to begin.  China plans to begin construction on a manned station, comparable to the Soviet space station Mir, by the beginning of the next decade.

I, as always, applaud China's progress in space exploration.  However, China's success in space flight always stirs up worries here at home about America's perceived decline as the preeminent space power.  Just last month, private space entrepreneur and founder of Bigelow Aerospace, Robert Bigelow, claimed that China has the ambition and ability to lay ownership to large swaths of the Moon.  Ambition, perhaps, but the ability to land people on the surface of the Moon is in China's distant future, if at all.  As it is, China simply doesn't give their various space agencies the funding they need to develop a truly heavy lift rocket capable of putting large payloads into Lunar orbit.  Add that to the fact that whatever China does in manned spaceflight, they'll being doing it alone.  Their manned program remains shrouded in military secrecy, sequestered from the openness of the international scientific community.  It is, ultimately, an unsustainable path that is doomed to fail.  Tourists will be spotting craters from lunar orbit in spacecraft built by Boeing and SpaceX long before China lands people on the Moon - so don't lose any sleep.