Hainan Sounding Department

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The altitude research department Hainan ( Chinese  海南探空部 , Pinyin Hǎinán Tànkōng Bù ) is a facility of the National Center for Space Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences east of the village Fuke (富克村) in the large village Yaxing of the prefecture-level city Danzhou in the northwest of the island of Hainan . Research is primarily carried out there on changes in the ionosphere , as well as on the influence of solar activity and the earth's magnetic field on these changes.

history

In 1986, the then Institute for Space Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (中国科学院 空间 物理 研究所, Pinyin Zhōngguó Kēxuéyuàn Kōngjiān Wùlǐ Yánjiūsuǒ , today's National Center for Space Science) founded a "Department of Height Research" (探空 部), which should deal with the development of sounding rockets and the necessary technology for launch sites and the recovery of the rockets. The instruments required for direct measurements in the high atmosphere should also be developed. In addition, the department's rockets were to be used to test payloads and their components intended for use in space during short flights, and to conduct independent experiments in the field of microgravity and life sciences .

The department for altitude research again set up a branch on the west coast of the island of Hainan, which at that time still belonged to the province of Guangdong , which was to deal in particular with the exploration of the ionosphere up to an altitude of 120 km. In the same year, the then most modern ion probe - a "Digisonde" from the Center for Atmospheric Research at the University of Massachusetts Lowell - was imported from the USA and measurements began. In the summer of 1988, a simple 6000 m² launch site for suborbital missiles of the Zhinü (织女) type was laid out a good 200 m east of the then large community of Fuke (富 克 镇, today a village of the large community of Yaxing) , officially as the "Hainan launch site for sounding rockets of the Chinese Academy of Sciences “(中国科学院 海南 探空 火箭 发射场, Pinyin Zhōngguó Kēxuéyuàn Hǎinán Tànkōng Huǒjiàn Fāshèchǎng ). This was the first civilian cosmodrome in China. About 200 km to the east is the Wenchang Cosmodrome , which went into operation in 2016 , a branch of Base 27 of the People's Liberation Army .

About 250 m south of the three-story main building, in which both the offices and the bedrooms of the scientists were housed - six people each shared a room - was and is the actual launch site. At that time it consisted of a 225 m² concreted area on which the mobile launch pad for the 7 m long rockets with a diameter of 30 - 40 cm could be safely parked, a command bunker and a workshop for the final assembly of the individual parts delivered from the mainland Missiles. Two truck-mounted radars that could receive the missiles' telemetry data were added during take-offs. When a Zhinü 1 (织女 一号) was launched for the first time on December 25, 1988, a fundamental problem at the Hainan site became apparent: the high humidity caused the rocket's solid propellant to become damp and unable to provide sufficient thrust. After a short flight, the rocket crashed into a field a few kilometers away, where it was only found by the scientists after a two-day search and had to be bought back from the uncooperative farmers for 200 yuan (at that time the price of an overnight stay in a four-star hotel). Between 1988 and 1991 a total of four sounding rockets of the type Zhinü 1 and Zhinü 3 were launched from the site, then initially there were no more launches.

Research projects

Yaxing is 19 ° north latitude on the south side of the northern vertex of the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA), which is 17 ° north of the magnetic equator . There are numerous phenomena to be observed that have an impact on space weather and thus also on satellite communication. In June 1998 the State Council of the People's Republic of China decided on a 13-year program to build a National Innovation System (国家 创新 体系), in which the Chinese Academy of Sciences should play a pioneering role as a test facility. As a result, the so-called “knowledge innovation project” (知识 创新 工程) was started at the academy. With funds from this program, the Hainan National Space Weather Observation and Research Station (海南 空间 天气 国家 野外 科学 wurde 研究 站) was set up in Fuke. The area to be explored has now been defined as the high atmosphere between 40 km and 300 km altitude, i.e. the area above that of weather balloons and below that of satellites.

In 2006 the State Commission for Development and Reform approved the space weather observation project Meridian (子午 工程, Pinyin Zōwǔ Gōngchéng ) of the National Center for Space Science and other institutions. On January 5, 2008, construction began on the project. At a cost of 167 million yuan, a total of 15 observation stations were set up along two intersecting lines at about 120 ° east longitude and 30 ° north latitude, one of them at the Hainan high-altitude research department. On the one hand, the earth's magnetic field, the earth's electrostatic field, etc. are continuously monitored there with constantly running measuring devices .

On the other hand, the launch site has been expanded to a large extent, including the possibility of filling and launching weather balloons before a rocket launch. There was also a telemetry receiving station with a trackable parabolic antenna to receive the payload data in the large municipality of Eman in the north of Danzhou (峨 蔓 遥测 站, today 峨 蔓 遥测 回收站) as well as three mobile receiving stations, which start along the coast all the way down to be built according to Haiwei . At the main building 250 m north of the launch site there is a control center with a mission control room (指挥 大厅), a separate launch control room (发 控 室), which is given command five minutes before a launch and from where staff from the Academy for Solid Rocket Engine Technology ignite the rocket and a ground segment for initial processing of the collected data. A final assembly hall was built 600 m east of the launch site, from where the rockets weighing more than a ton about twelve hours before the launch, which usually takes place shortly before or at sunrise, with a long, manually pulled and pushed car over a narrow path to Launch pad to be brought. This transport takes about 30 minutes.

To the northeast of the Hongling von Yaxing community, about 5 km southwest of the headquarters in Fuke, is the Hainan Coherent Scatter Phased Array Radar or HCOPAR , a phased array antenna system with 18 x 4 five-element Yagi antennas , with those on one Working frequency of 47.5 MHz, so-called Field Aligned Irregularities in the E and F layers of the ionosphere are investigated, usually changes in the plasma density lasting several hours, at which the electrons align themselves with the earth's magnetic field . 19 ° 30 ′ 0 ″  N , 109 ° 6 ′ 0 ″  E

On June 3, 2010 at 4 a.m., the first rocket of the Meridian project was launched from there, a Tianying 4A sounding rocket developed by the Academy for Solid Rocket Engine Technology . When the rocket had reached an altitude of 70 km after a flight time of 113 seconds , a payload capsule called Haiyan A ("Storm Petrel"), developed by the Center for Space Science and Applied Research at the time, detached from it . The capsule then returned to earth on a parachute and continuously sent data on temperature, air pressure, wind direction and wind speed to the telemetry station on the ground between 60 and 20 km altitude.

Layers of the ionosphere

The next launch on May 7, 2011 at 7:00 a.m. local time sharp, a Tianying 3C launcher was used, which rotated about twice per second during the flight. The instrument capsule Kunpeng 1 was mounted on the rocket , named after a mythological giant fish that transforms into the Chinese variant of the bird Roch . After 43 seconds, at an altitude of 60 km, a device for measuring the electrostatic earth field extended its two rod antennas. Three seconds later, at an altitude of 65 km, a Langmuir probe developed by the Center for Space Science and Applied Research and the Graz University of Technology together with Italian scientists was deployed. Both instruments were used here for the first time. After 215 seconds, about three and a half minutes after launch, the rocket had reached the apex of its orbit at an altitude of 196 km. Exactly seven minutes after the start, it then reentered the earth's atmosphere. The Langmuir probe was still working up to an altitude of 41 km, then the experiment, during which control measurements were carried out in parallel with the portable Digisonde DPS-4 of the sounding department, was ended. Since the rocket had been launched at an elevation of 87 ° and an azimuth of 45 ° northwest, it then crashed into the Gulf of Tonkin . During the experiment, the electron density valley between the E and F layers of the ionosphere for the time shortly after sunrise was located at an altitude of 123.5 km.

In addition to the activities in the context of the Meridian project, the Hainan high-altitude research department also conducts other research. On April 5, 2013 at 05:55 local time , a sounding rocket of the type Tianying 3E was launched under the direction of Wu Ji , the then director of the National Center for Space Science , which released 1 kg of barium dust at the apex of its orbit at an altitude of 191 km . Under the influence of the morning sun, the metallic barium ionized quickly and formed a barium cloud. With the aid of the Kunpeng 1 instrument capsule, which was used again here, the development of the barium cloud was observed and, during the descent of the rocket, the vertical distribution of electrons and ions was measured with the Langmuir probe and the structure of the electric field was measured with the field strength meter. This enabled insights into the dynamic laws in the ionosphere near the equator. This was the first time that China conducted an active experiment in the high atmosphere.

The commissioning of the Changjiang nuclear power plant 25 km further west on the coast of Haiwei on December 25, 2015 did not affect the work of the sounding department. At 2 a.m. on April 27, 2016, again under the direction of Wu Ji, a two-stage Tianying 3F rocket lifted a Kunpeng 1B instrument capsule to an altitude of 316 km. This device, which was developed with funding from the 863 program , has, in addition to deployable antennas made of soft carbon fiber material, its own options for position regulation and control of the rotational speed, which enables an even more precise determination of the electric and magnetic field vectors. A T-7 / GF-01A rocket had already reached an altitude of 320 km from the Jiuquan Cosmodrome in 1968 , but it was a technology test. The trial in April 2016 was the first time that Chinese researchers carried out in-situ measurements in the upper layers of the ionosphere.

As part of the second expansion stage of the Meridian project, which began in 2019, the Hainan high-altitude research department is building a system consisting of several lidar devices, with which, among other things, the Rayleigh scattering at an altitude of 30-70 km and the density of sodium atoms at an altitude of 80-105 km should be measured. It is hoped that this will increase flight safety and the safety of civil and military suborbital missiles . In addition, the lidar system will measure the density of metastable helium atoms at an altitude of 200–1000 km. The insights gained into the mechanisms of near-earth space are intended to make the orbit determination and control of satellites more reliable. The lidar system is scheduled to go into operation in 2023.Template: future / in 3 years

Web links

Individual evidence

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  29. ↑ Mark Wade Tianying-3E in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English)
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Coordinates: 19 ° 31 '16.3 "  N , 109 ° 8' 53.2"  E