China sees great leaps in maritime space tracking - official (Xinhua) Updated: 2005-10-16 20:20
China's maritime space tracking technologies have achieved substantial
progress over the past 27 years and reached the advanced levels in the world, an
official in charge of the operation said Sunday.
The maritime space surveying and controlling operation, which has been
tracking China's second manned spacecraft Shenzhou-6 since the lift-off on
Wednesday, has made a number of breakthroughs since it was initiated in 1978,
according to Jian Shilong, director in charge of the program.
China is able to carry out maritime measuring and controlling on objects at
sea, under the surface of water, on international satellites, and manned
spacecrafts, said Jian.
However, during the initial stage, China was only able to measure and control
objects at land, on the surface of water, domestic satellites and unmanned
spacecrafts, he recalled.
The operation, equipped with four "Yuanwang" tracking ships, has accomplished
some 50 key scientific researches and tasks with no hitches or failures for the
past 27 years.
The "Yuanwang" ships have involved in China's past five Shenzhou space flight
missions during 1999-2003, conducting measuring and controlling operations
including the orbit transfer, attitude adjustment, video and audio transmission
for China's first manned spacecraft Shenzhou-5 in 2003.
The tracking ships have accomplished designed tasks, including orbit
maintenance for the record-making Shenzhou-6, despite rough sea weather on
Friday and Saturday.
The four ships boast advanced technologies in terms of the functions and
precision of measuring and controlling, automatization and reliability, said
Jian.
The ships and some 20 surveying stations on land jointly build up China's
space telemetry network.
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