2021/04/02 China's new mission: Journey to deep space

[Music] on today's world inside on a mission to reach the stars to explore the final frontier to boldly go where no one has gone before as china embarks on a journey to deep space here is our host tien wei hello and welcome to world inside our special program today journey to deep space i'm tianwei humans have always been fascinated by the unknown and there is no space we know less about than the great beyond outer space for better observation the world's largest telescope located in southwest china called fast also known as china's sky eye will be open to the global scientific community it will accept observation applications from scientists around the world starting from wednesday as we look up to the skies chinese space engineering are also working around the clock to explore the universe china space program carried out 39 launches in the year 2020 in 2021 china will start building its own space station several space missions and manned explorations are in the pipeline in the coming year recently i visited a very important entity which is called wing chun spacecraft launch site in tainan i met this lady joe chengyou a space mission subsystem launch commander whose job is to make that happen [Music] big sister joe tong it's the youngest commander at the wenchang spacecraft launch site in hainanese [Music] [Applause] the 24 year old woman was in charge of the rocket connector system of the jungle 5 mission china's third successful moon landing in seven years from seeking answers to questions to the heavens on the red planet to samples gathered from the moon china had a remarkable year in space china now has carried out 39 launches so far in 2020 that's more launches than any other nation for the first time since 2018 39 launches completed to compare with 34 from the us 20 from russia and this feat was repeated in 2019 from navigation to communication and earth observation satellites space related tech is slowly fitting pieces of a big puzzle about our place in space starting june last year hainan province has given full play to a free trade port policy and listed the wenchang international space city as one of the 11 key parks of the hainan free trade court it's one of the three major science and technology cities covering sea land and air wanchang international space city is seen as a busy hub for growing deep space industries during my visit the wing chun spacecraft alongside just successfully launched the long march 8th rocket foreign as china's fourth and southernmost the spacecraft alongside wing chun was specially selected for its low latitude which is only 19 degrees north of the equator the location gives the launch vehicle a performance boost gained from the earth's rotational speed the coastal location of the launch complex allows much larger rocket booster segments to be transported from factories launches are carried out in the southeast direction into the south pacific avoiding the possibility of rocket debris falling into any populated area in 2021 china will start building its own space station a big dream and cold order for its makers on our way back from the launch tower changmi shared with me a song from her favorite singer under the moonlight i must keep chasing they're always a voice saying don't stop [Music] [Music] yes [Music] the china manned space agency said with its space station nearly done several space missions including the launch of the station's core module cargo replenishment and a manned flight will be carried out one after another meanwhile china and russia have agreed to jointly build a lunar space station that will be open to all countries according to both sides no one knows it better than bao weimin the director of science and technology at the china aerospace science and technology corporation who's also with the chinese academy of sciences let's hear his thoughts on china's new space missions and what it will take to accomplish them all we understand that china and russia are working together on the space station so how should we understand this kind of cooperation this year we are entering the launch phase of china's space station which you also call the construction phase we will launch the car module next month then the first group of crew members will enter the space car module in june so from now until a month from now as you just said what is likely to be your major task after this year's two sessions our focus will be on the program launch our major work is to build the space station there will be 11 launches three big launches including the core module experimental module one and experimental module two and then to assemble them in space launches of four cargo and refueling craft to transport food and equipment to the space station also launches a four-man spacecraft to send four kinds of crew members to the space station the construction of the whole space station may be completed next year that sounds amazing among all of these work which do you think will be the most challenging uh for us building the space station is a vital and challenging task after the launch of the core module and work of two crews we're going to evaluate the operating condition of the car module in orbit and after that the third crew will fly to the sky and build the space station and then the experiment module 1 and experiment module 2 will be launched into space separately assembled together under their command of the astronauts this process is the most difficult i understand when china brings back the soil of the moon we have been hearing intentions to cooperate from the u.s side on that so shall we understand that as long as china is making progress and big progress there will be bigger opportunities for cooperation even with the united states [Music] after the return of chang of five many countries want to work with us on the samples from the moon china will do a study on the samples with other countries cooperation in space exploration is a policy in our country for a long time and we will not change the principle but at first you must meet the demand of main research tasks of our own meanwhile there is an approval process for the lunar samples the research plans proposed by each country can only be carried out after being recognized by experts and relevant departments i understand interesting the other thing is about the mars the exploration of the mars tien one how do you see its mission how do you assess its performance [Music] still on the way orbiting landing and inspecting are all three steps in one go completing them in one progress which is china's mars exploration plan it is different from those of the united states russia and europe the mars exploration of these countries are separated in different programs orbiting landing and inspecting and even sampling returns are carried out separately we basically combine all steps since one can do those jobs [Music] now the probe is orbiting mars after a comprehensive assessment in may or june we will choose an opportunity to land it on mars and the rover will explore the surface in the future china will also collect samples and return them to earth so i think that china's mars exploration is only one-third completed and two-thirds of the mission is waiting for us to we understand the us and some of the others have been of course a long having the dream of exploring the mars and they have already achieved something so what they have achieved what does that mean for china how much inspirations and also uh you know uh clues for future research directions would they provide to the chinese scientist the mars exploration of the united states and other countries is very meaningful to us the us has accumulated rich experience in this area and we can learn from it for our future study although there may be many differences in the details i think the whole picture of their technical roots are very valuable for us the other thing is about what you recently suggested the mr bell china is working on the internet satellite and has been testing about it tell me more about that the functions and performance of the spatial internet and the terrestrial internet are the same just one in the sky and the other on the ground the biggest advantage of spatial internet is that it can cover a wider area and can send interconnected information to any location in the world without relying on optical fibers use of great significance to the development of china's information industry the dominance and autonomy of information is very important we are now doing work to form our own spatial internet the next step requires the overall planning and arrangement from the national level the amount of space resources is limited viewed from a global perspective it may be better for countries to work together to build a joint space internet but due to various reasons it is impossible to build just one network around the world now but it is necessary for one country to build one network as a large developing country china has the responsibility to do this well and provide with better spatial information services uh we understand that during the cold war there was a lot of competition between the u.s and the former soviet union on the outer space exploration and now of course china u.s is at a critical juncture nobody knows where it is going but people are asking the question whether china and u.s is going to have a space race as they did between u.s and soviet union what is your take as a scientist i think that china's current space exploration and space infrastructure are working for china's development serving the entire society and even serving the world like our bedo navigation it serves the world we do not want competition we develop space infrastructure for economic development economic security and economic and social needs everyone should explore space based on equality mutual benefit and win-win results space resources are the same as the cbd of a city they are limited china calls for the global development and use of limited resources let's not use the word competition but the term win-win science knows no borders we hope to explore develop and build space with more scientists in the world thank you so much mr bao for taking your time and talking to us really appreciate it and you're watching a world inside special journey to deep space coming up china's new space mission to boldly go where no one has gone before what will it take to accomplish it we'll be back with answers from the moon go to deep space to mars to asteroid and jupiter and saturn and the founder of the solar system welcome back this is world inside special program journey to deep space i'm tinway china has steadily made progress on humanity's last frontier in 2013 china became the third country to successfully make a soft landing on the moon with its changa 3 rover six years later in 2019 changa's force landing on the dark side of the moon is a milestone in exploring our nearest celestial neighbor up close last year chinese chango 5 returned to earth with more than a thousand grams of lunar soil making china only the third country to ever do that china's mission to the moon has brought a lot of beautiful surprises and now china is working on going to mars and at the same time sending people to the international space station on that i talked to xi yan song the director general of the asia pacific space cooperation organization to find out more about how china plans to reach its space streams and how the asia-pacific region is working together as partners toward that goal take a look where is china on the moon on the mars well we can see a collective number of nations that is doing their effort going to mars with the us effort with the uae and with chinese tien one all successfully inserted to the mars orbit and with some of the lending success and we're very pleased to see that where china is doing is approach through moon to mars this moon in denver including three stages which has been successfully completed including orbiting landing and sample return and the sample return was outstanding uh in recent months and we have very pleased to to notice that it has also received the highest praise from the nation when it comes to china's ability of innovation where is it we do see a number of comments and some opportunity opinions saying that we have been to mars and been to the moon why do it again so well the chinese in denver is to find opportunities of innovative ideas we have landed before landing mission we have the chung one and two mission which are both orbiting missions but the channel two mission take the opportunity of re-routing and repurpose that spacecraft to study an asteroid that more than 1 billion miles away so that is one innovation point of the orbiting phase where at the landing phase we have chang iii successfully landing on the near side of the moon so we have rerouted and repurposed the channel four to a international cooperation project where it will be landed on the far side of the moon and that was also successful and also based on that we have also lent launched a relay satellite that is orbiting on the far side of the moon to relay data back to earth as you might know that the far side of moon cannot be communicated directly so the satellites as well as the lending process was all very innovative ideas and was not done before mr xu what do you expect likely to be the next few steps and whether they are significant in terms of mars exploration well the next step obviously we have successfully inserted uh the taiwan one into orbit it comprises three parts the orbiter the lander and the rover itself right now three are flying together in same formation in the highly elliptical orbit the closest point of tiem 1 to to mars is 288 kilometers so we're using that opportunity to imaging the ground to hire to highlight and to choose the right landing point once that is done we will further validate this telemetry tracking and control system and also validate the communication system so that we can deploy the lender in late may and early june we see some very specific stuff taken by china and united states for example about the exploration of mars almost every step of the way in terms of public exposure there is an apparent competition going on so i really wondered mr chu from your perspective where is this competition leading us to well i think competition will bring the best out of each partners and this is also true for the u.s and it's true for china what's the best that the u.s has already shown as a result of this what is the best that china has shown as a result of this the cutting-edge technology that we have for example we do not have communications beyond the moon before any communication beyond that distance is innovative for china and also for for mars missions uh the lender and the rover on itself uh the the space the sky crane that they call it has all the control technologies and once landed the uh the power system that is using radioactive isotope to heat up the battery every night and rove during the day and using all the sophisticated equipments on board the rover as well as to collect the samples and locate those samples maybe return them back to earth in the future these are unprecedented for the human resource and human beings and i always say that we will become interplanetary species one once we live on another planet so mars could be the first step to do that revolution so it for revolutions you need innovation you need new ideas and you need cutting-edge technologies all of these will be combined during the competition process and during the cooperation process we once we all have this capabilities of going that same destination we will naturally combine our efforts interesting when you say we will naturally combine our efforts is it really going to be natural uh it is politically difficult but we are involving we are having new innovative ideas and pragmatic approaches um with different political scenarios uh there will be mergers and cooperations in the whole course of competitions competition can exist on earth but outer space we should all have cooperations this is true for the international space station where all nations working and living in the same confined spaces but for exploration of interplanetary missions uh efforts should be combined so where is china still my question you know if there is something like a few mountains where's china where's the united states where's japan where's india some of your other members how would you help us to paint that picture the many ways of evaluating a country space capabilities one of them is the number of launches uh former soviet union us had more than one thousand launches already but china is in the 200 and 300 category however china is is rapidly growing uh for example last year we had 39 launches but i always say 40 launches because there is one launch from the lunar surface back to the lunar orbit by the chunk of five that is another launch so it's 40 launches last year number one in the world and this year we're expecting about the same categories and same same number so the number of launches means that we have a very robust and ambitious space project along with the economy growing uh i believe that uh we're catching up very quickly so uh first first uh the number of in terms of in-orbit facilities and infrastructures we see a number of satellites operational in orbit u.s has more than 500 china more than 200 so the the others are smaller numbers around 100 and lower so in in terms of launching capabilities launching uh frequencies uh satellite operating uh numbers and infrastructures i would say china in space sector is uh is very good in number two and number three uh position but uh subtleties in in particular particular areas of space technology maybe we're a little bit behind but uh scale-wise we're quite quite robust fascinating stuff really but you know um the cooperation side what is the state of cooperation among your members right now what are some of the most promising and pioneering directions you're looking at well as asia-pacific cooperation organization we're doing mostly space application cooperations and educational cooperations we have education projects of all members countries that can send faculties and students to the nations that have competence and capability of degree education and short-term trainings in addition to that also we have three or more most prominent projects one of them being the earthquake prediction project using the satellite zhang hyung number one for aeronospheric studies these ionospheric anomalies has a very subtle connection with the earthquake precursor so that once that problem is solved where we would be able to have a very good early warning of earthquakes so even a few minutes would be significant for the human safeties and properties other projects including a apostles product this project using a ground-based telescope to observe the space debris so that we can have a connection of all members each country will have a telescope that form a network of observations therefore enhancing the capabilities of observations other than that also we have data service sharing platform this platform shares the satellite data among all member countries for agricultural forestry environmental and disaster purpose we take the form of common destinations and we we take the call of that it's also we take approaches to realize that by sharing all the resource and technologies and projects together and that not only space technology but also scientific missions applications of remote sensing data earthquake predictions and disaster mitigations as well as education and training resources all of these are to bring the capacity of member states up to a level that they can start their own projects and space programs so this is very true for some of the old partners of china for example brazil they developed their space capabilities through the cbs siebers projects and our member countries uh some of them have space capabilities and competence manufacturing satellites launching their own uh satellites into orbit and these are true for turkey for iran for pakistan and thailand so many countries do have competence and in this process we try to enhance these competence instead of telling them to to choose a stand where it will work with i think cooperation is more extensive rather than include exclusive exclusive after more than a decade of lunar exploration a new frontier deep space exploration is now on china's national agenda but you know it's not just about strategic issue it's also an issue about science about how human being is related to the great universe i'm glad i talked to wuji who's both a science fiction writer and former director general of the national space science center of chinese academy of sciences congratulations on your book a lunar hotel wow that's a quite a popular book not only in china but also in other parts of the world now yes it was published one year ago in in chinese version so i have a very good friend he volunteered to translate it into a french hotel the la merch the blue let me ask you mr wu about some of the latest development in deep exploration you've been arguing through china's the two sessions that it is extremely crucial tell me why yes deep space exploration is a is a new area for china we have initiated lunar exploration about 15 years ago 16 years ago then we succeed with the three steps uh operating the moon and the landing on the moon and the sample return from the moon we have just uh obtained uh 1700 grams lunar soil from the moon so this was a very successful and for the for the near future we are going to go out from the moon go to deep space to mars and even further to asteroid and jupiter and saturn and the founder of the solar system so that will be our plan in the next 15 years several other countries are also coming in of course the united states is the leading force in deep space exploration they have launched many missions to mars very successful missions to mars and recently beside the united states uh european space agency russian japan india and even uae united arabs they also have their mars missions so uh china would like to be uh one member of this club and this this is a very uh exciting for the for the younger generation of china so they are looking forward to the outer space but some could argue mr wu you could well put the money into deep sea exploration into other areas that would bring in fact similar opportunities for further exploration about the world and also the byproduct scientific byproduct that would benefit uh both china and the world so why is china as everybody else is so fascinated by the outer space we could well do it on the other directions when we see deep space exploration of space science uh it's just one more dimension it doesn't mean it will replace the deeper sea exploration so uh china is uh the economic quantity of china is larger now so there there's a possibility to cover all these areas so we should not miss deep space exploration on the other hand when you look at the the universe you will think of think of yourself for example if you go to the moon and when you're standing on the moon you're looking back to our earth you will see the earth it's so beautiful you you will look at yourself from another point of view from the universe look at yourself so the human beings are really one with one shared future you don't see any boundary of countries you you don't really like people are fighting on the earth because earth is so beautiful and you feel you have to protect it so when you go out you have different feelings yeah and if you go further out outside of the solar system you will think about is there any other intelligent life there so if there's other intelligent life there how could we communicate can we learn something from them so all these open human beings mind and for young people this is a trigger for them to to think about the earth the human beings uh the future their future so it's much wider dimension for the young people mr wu there's also the question about you know science fiction decades ago for example many of the things they described and now have become true and uh people are wondering whether the science fictions a lot of stories within it today will eventually become the realities of tomorrow and therefore they say oh maybe scientists a science fiction writer some of them could even in a way being profit as they say uh what do you mean how do you see this kind of discussion yes it is true uh in the science fiction there are there are one branch it's called near future science fiction so uh uh when you talk about near future science fiction is when the when the writers write it they have an idea of what could be realized in the near future 50 years 100 years so uh but uh when the development when the science and technology develops so fast uh as to what we are facing now uh summer 50 years of fiction can be true in 20 years so uh it can really help people to realize uh with with modern technology to realize it faster so what i am writing in the book lunar hotel all the technology there is almost ready although you don't see them right now but there's no no blockage to realize them it's only money it's it's only time so those things can be realized faster maybe in 20 years we will build not only chinese other people will build a hotel on the mall uh this can be uh even faster so i'm predicting 20 years but maybe it can be realized in 15 years so with the fast development so you have to you don't really uh okay uh writing uh nothing is something it can be realized from the real future now back to reality uh uh from from scenarios now professor wu now come to reality china has been working on the innovation area has been encouraging uh innovation from the country itself how do you see the realities that china is facing and the necessities of doing it we are in a period of of a new era we after uh this uh 13 thirteenths of five years plan we are now opening a new chapter of fourteenth five years plan and china is aiming to be uh within the front row of uh innovative country in in 2035 so in 15 years china will be more advanced uh all this will encourage the young people the young generation and of course including us to do much better and in the past 20 years we are most of the time we are following the advanced technology of the world we are learning we are following we call even sometimes copy but now we we feel that we have to invent some we have to create something so innovation is much important for us if we don't know it if we don't create new frontiers uh we cannot move forward because we are almost there we are almost very close to the frontiers so we have to lead the world china is uh has a responsibility to lead and now of course there's the issue of capo isn't it mainly that china as a result of geopolitics and many other reasons will be not necessarily having access to some of the latest technologies mr wu how do you see this reality and what do you think are the most urgent issues that china really have to work on in order to overcome this difficult period of time uh it is true that there are some countries in the world uh i i i should say united states is is the leading country to block china in the area i am working space technology space science and technology we have been blocked by the u.s for 20 years they have uh they had a called a warfare law from the congress they blocked china blocked their own scientists and industry to collaborate with china in space technology even space science when we go to an international conference we cannot talk with with the nasa people with the u.s people space people you know bilaterally they have to when we talk they have to ask the third party to come a european or japanese to come and make it multilateral if we talk of uh only bilateral they are breaking their laws but for china we are open there's no problem for us we we talk we can talk with them so uh we have been blocked by the u.s for more than 15 years but still we are developing so it's not a threat it's a it will give us some difficulties but uh finally we can we can go forward no problem we will not stop there will not because of this we will not stop with our development for example the recent completement of navigation system of chinese navigation system radio system all the components on both of the satellites are made in china so we can do that within with uh by ours our own technology my conversation with wuji both a science fiction writer and a key person in china's journey to explore the outer space that's all we have for today's special program journey to deep space if you like to see more search world inside or check out our youtube channel follow us on twitter and facebook i'm tim way on behalf of the team thanks for watching and bye for now [Music] you

Channel: CGTN

Views: 130,382

Rating: 4.8189406 out of 5

Keywords: CGTN, News, China, Space, tech, technology, science, 航空, 航天

Id: 04fcn6L0xlQ

Length: 41min 51sec (2511 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/realityconfirmed]

Thanks for the post. Very informative.

[u/caidicus]

Man, China is just doing so damn well with its space program.

I am filled with overwhelming pride at China's progress.