Shenzhou VI Mission Thread

[ace5]

Welcome istepig,<br /><br />Please, put all notes on the Chinese space program that you find of interesting for us here in the West.<br />If you could find the SZ-6 mission patch and link us to an image, I would be personally very grateful.<br /><br />ace5

 

[lstepig]

First, thanks for your reply!<br />I will try my best to put all notes that I think will interest you all(in fact, me, too). <br />I don't quite understand the phrase "mission patch". Do you meant whether I can find out some images of fragments dropped from the ChangZheng rocket?

 

[ace5]

The Mission patch is the symbol wich the taikonauts wear in their chests (on their suits). See:<br /><br />http://spacemissions.de/seite12/s12-shenzhou5/shenzhou5patch.gif<br /><br />the very beautiful SZ5 patch!!!

 

[tap_sa]

Wow, easthetic! Good thing the Chinese carry on the tradition. And I'm glad to see new members from the new manned spaceflight superpower, welcome aboard lstepig!

 

[ace5]

And I have a doubt about chinese computers:<br />How do you Chinese deal with keyboards? Do you use the ABCD... etc keyboard? The Chinese language uses thousands of ideograms to represent words, am I right? I am very curious about it, but I have no chance yet to ask this to a Chinese computer user.

 

[mapletang]

Hi, ace5. I know this is off the topic but i would like to explain the chinese input system to you. I am a Chinese living in Canada. <br /><br />Basically, in 1960-70ish, the Chinese government established a sytem which used alphabet to spel the chinese characters. <br /><br />The system is called PinYin. Yet it was developped from BoPoMoFo system which developped by the ROC(now Taiwan) government in 1937.<br /><br />Basically, you can spell all the Chinese characters with alphabet (pronounced very close to vowel and consonant).<br /><br />For example:<br />Hello in China is &#20320;&#22909;&#65288;or &#22963;&#22909; in traditional chinese)<br />In the PinYin system the input is (Ni Hao)<br /><br />Due to the unique tone system in Chinese ( which carried four tones in modern chinese, 5 tons in chinese in 1920 and 9 tones in Cantonese), when you type "ni" using chinese input system, you will automatically have several characters to choose from a list, which numbered a bunch of chinese characters with the sound ni (in different tone). then you use your number key to choose the character you want to select by pressing the associated number.<br /><br />A majority of Chinese use this type of Chinese input system in mainland China. In taiwan, people use BoPoMoFo system which use a diffrent keyboard layout. <br /><br />Another alternative chinese input system included "five-strokes"(wubi, &#65292;&#20116;&#31508;&#65292;&#20116;&#31558;&#65289;,that will decompose a character in to several strokes and use the number pad and letter pad to replace the strokes. This input system is superbe with crazy input speed. But lots of memorization is required.<br /><br />P.S.: "ShenZhou", "Fei Junlong","Zhai Zhigang", "Jiu Quan" are all Chinese in PinYin.<br /><br /><br />Hope this would help a bit.<br /><br /><br />Also, for the ShenZhou VI launched, there are two distinctive arguements raising in the Chinese society. One for sure including most mainlanders

 

[ace5]

thank you, a very nice explanation.<br /><br />I think that the Chinese investments in spaceflight will be returning tho their economy in the next years, as happens in the rest of the world. And the satellite laucher market can also keep giving some profits to countries that offers their satellite-launch facilities. This happens to Brazil right. We have a great interest in developing our launcher to offer it to launch payloads and rent our launchpads to other launchers from abroad.

 

[barrykirk]

Welcome Istepig

 

[gaetanomarano]

<br />about China space plans... <br /><br />in latest news, NASA confirms they don't need help and don't wants to share CEV-SDLV-Lunar technologies with other countries and space agencies... <br /><br />but... if NASA don't wants to see another Sputnik flyies... I suggest: <br /><br />1. build the spaceplane, not the "capsule", if they don't want to see "another" country's "Sputnik" spaceplane going in orbit... (while playing with the CEV-Mercury and the "stick"-Redstone tests...) <br /><br />2. share the new technologies (and expenses) with other countries (including Russia and China) if don't want to see "another" country's "Vostok" landing on the moon... (while "the final unmanned CEV tests" starts...) <br /><br />next time... "another" country, may have an "advanced technology" that they don't want to share with NASA... <br /><br /><br />

 

[teije]

The orbiting capsule of China's Shenzhou VI spacecraft, which was launched into space six months ago, has returned to earth after orbiting 2,920 times, state media reported Saturday.<br />The orbiting capsule was left in space after China's second manned flight returned home, Xinhua news agency said.<br /><br />Astronauts Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng became instant celebrities after returning from the five-day mission in October.<br /><br />Xinhua said the orbiting capsule successfully gathered scientific data during its 180-day mission that involved a series of tests and experiments.<br /><br />The mission has laid a "solid foundation" for China's subsequent space engineering, such as its planned mission to the moon, Xinhua said.<br /><br />China's next manned space flight, the third in its ambitious program, is scheduled to take place in 2008, state media reported last week.<br /><br />Shenzhou V, China's first manned spacecraft, blasted off in October 2003, making China the third nation after the former Soviet Union and the United States to send a human into space.<br /><br />link<br /><br />

 

[astrowikizhang]

“The orbiting capsule of China's Shenzhou VI spacecraft, which was launched into space six months ago, has returned to earth after orbiting 2,920 times, state media reported Saturday. ”<br /><br />The orbital module has not re-entered the atmosphere yet. It is still on the orbit according to the officail statement: http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2006-04-15/14068705001s.shtml<br /><br />In Chinese, the statement says the capsule has finished its expected lifetime of six months on orbit, and it is still operational for now. And it is the one that stays on orbit for the longest time in the Shenzhou program.

 

[teije]

interesting....<br />I just copied the spacedaily link text, and I can't read chinese, so I'll have to take your word for it. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><br /><br />So, now I'm a bit confused, if it didn't reenter and it's still operating, have they extended the mission?<br /><br />Btw, does the Shenzhou orbital module have it's own propulsion system? Or is it in an uncontrolled orbit after the crew and service module have separated?

 

[astrowikizhang]

That is the only news release I can found about that topic.<br /><br />The orbital module has its own solar array, guidance system, and propulsion. <br /><br />The news says the optimized fuel usage theme has been applied to help extend its lifetime.<br /><br />I think it is still operational so far, but maybe the fuel is empty and it is waiting for re-entry.<br /><br />The news says Chinese have gained a lot experience of maintaining spacesraft in LEO for a long time, which is important to the future rendesvouz-docking mission.