Wenchang Cosmodrome

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Coordinates: 19 ° 37 ′ 38 ″  N , 110 ° 57 ′ 3 ″  E

Wenchang Cosmodrome (China)
Jiuquan
Jiuquan
Taiyuan
Taiyuan
Xichang
Xichang
Wenchang
Wenchang
Cosmodrome in the People's Republic of China

The Wenchang Cosmodrome ( Chinese 文昌 卫星 发射 中心 Wénchāng Wèixīngfāshèzhōngxīn ) is the southernmost of the four cosmodromes in the People's Republic of China . It is located in the northeast of the island of Hainan in the area of ​​the large community Longlou of the independent city of Wenchang . The cosmodrome serves as the launch site for the latest generation of Chinese launch vehicles and spacecraft .

Location advantages

Due to its location close to the equator at around 20 degrees north latitude , the Wenchang Cosmodrome can use the same amount of energy - that is, with an equally powerful rocket - to transport heavier payloads into geostationary orbits than from the more northerly space stations. In addition, the launches from Wenchang run over the sea, so that no burned-out rocket stages can fall on residential areas or usable areas.

history

prehistory

As early as 1975, a senior employee of the then Seventh Ministry of Mechanical Engineering (a predecessor organization of today's National Space Agency ) suggested that China should build a cosmodrome on Hainan specifically for the launch of geostationary satellites . At that time, however, the Cultural Revolution was still going on and the proposal was rejected for political reasons. During the Cold War , a location near the coast was considered too endangered by foreign powers. In addition, there were and are technical and geographical reasons that speak against the current location of the Cosmosdrom. As early as 1987, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was considering creating a launch site for suborbital rockets at the current location of the cosmodrome . Because of the swampy terrain near the sea and the resulting high investment in fortifying the subsurface and the relatively high population density on the east coast of Hainan, it was decided to set up the Hainan high-altitude research department in the northwest of the island.

When in 1990, as part of the preliminary planning for a manned space program , the construction of a fourth cosmodrome, specially designed for heavy launch vehicles, was considered, a local politician from Hainan submitted a formal application for the construction of the said cosmodrome on the island. Despite the advantage of the location close to the equator, this application was rejected due to a lack of infrastructure. It would have required an investment of at least 20 billion yuan, which was unacceptable to the Beijing government at the time. When the manned space program was officially launched on September 21, 1992, the Jiuquan Cosmodrome was designated as the launch site for the spacecraft.

Site selection and construction preparations

From 1994 the discussion about a cosmodrome on the island of Hainan picked up speed again. In order to drop the boosters - and, in the event of an accident, the debris - of the rockets launched in an easterly direction with the earth's rotation, only one location on the east coast of the island came into question. Five locations along the east coast of the island were shortlisted, from north to south:

In the mid-1990s, Chinese space travel was split between two agencies. The infrastructure, i.e. the cosmodromes and the Xi'an satellite control center , were subordinate to the Science, Technology and Industry Commission for National Defense , while the umbrella company for the space industry was responsible for the development and manufacture of rockets and satellites. Here the Defense Technology Commission had the say: the rockets had to align themselves with the launch pads, and not the launch pads with the launchers. This led to conflicts and friction losses. In this situation, the umbrella company for the space industry sided with the provincial government, hoping to get its own cosmodrome in Hainan, which is independent of the Defense Technology Commission. The Defense Technology Commission, in turn, feared that with the enormous investments that were necessary in Hainan - and desired by the provincial government - the existing cosmodromes, especially Xichang , would be neglected. In the end it was agreed that Hainan would not be an independent cosmodrome, but would be administratively subordinate to Base 27 of the People's Liberation Army in Xichang. In the future, Xichang should primarily be used for military satellite launches, while Hainan should be responsible for commercial launches with heavy launch vehicles.

Location of Wenchang (pink). The gray area in the south of the island is Sanya.

Sanya was excluded from the further choice of location because this area on the southern tip of the island lies exactly in the way of the summer typhoons coming from the southeast . However, the same applies to the entire east coast of Hainan, i.e. to all of the suggested locations. The choice finally fell on Longlou in the independent city of Wenchang, in the north-east of the island. The main witness office of the People's Liberation Army , which is now responsible , submitted a formal application to the State Council of the People's Republic of China and the Central Military Commission for the establishment of a satellite launch base, while the provincial government pushed ahead with the construction of the infrastructure necessary in the vicinity of the base. In August 2007, the main witness office's application was granted and the construction of the Wenchang Cosmodrome approved; Construction, management and use were the responsibility of the Xichang Cosmodrome.

Before construction began, 6,000 villagers had to be relocated in the area between the large communities of Longlou and Dongjiao .

construction

The official laying of the foundation stone for the new cosmodrome took place on September 14, 2009. Surveying work began immediately afterwards. The first things that struck the engineers from Xichang, who were used to the tropical climate, were the high salinity of the air (the cosmodrome is only 800 m from the beach), the heavy rains, the frequent thunderstorms and above all the strong wind.

In mid-2013, the rough construction work was essentially finished. After the necessary devices for receiving telemetry data , tracing and controlling the rockets had been installed in the TT&C station on the bronze drum mountain east of Longlou , a successful test operation with a simulated rocket launch took place in December 2013. The fastening ropes of the station's parabolic antenna had to be reinforced again in July 2014 when Typhoon Rammasun, a Category 5 cyclone with wind speeds of up to 260 km / h, passed over the island.

Shortly afterwards, corrosion from the salty air near the sea was found on metal parts of the system. Instead of involving the responsible quality control Xichang (西昌 质量 监督 站, Pinyin Xīchāng Zhìliàng Jiāndū Zhàn ), the instruction was issued that regular rust protection work should be carried out in the event of stubborn corrosion. Since then, the soldiers have spent part of their time on the bronze drum mountain with sandpaper and oil paint in order to repaint all metal surfaces over and over again.

On September 10, 2014, Maj. Gen. Yang Liwei , deputy director of the Manned Space Bureau , announced that the cosmodrome was operational.

Facilities

A Changzheng 5 on its way to the launch pad (June 26, 2017). In the background the lightning rod towers.

The Wenchang Cosmodrome is designed for Changzheng 5 (heavy payloads) and Changzheng 7 (medium payloads) launch vehicles , which can be launched at an angle of 90 ° to the south (polar orbit) to 175 ° to the east (equatorial orbit). For this purpose, two permanently installed launch ramps with a height of 91.7 m (CZ-5) and 85.8 m (CZ-7) are available at the southern end of the site . Each of the launch ramps is surrounded by four 120 m high, slender metal lattice towers that act as lightning rods. The launch ramps also have a cooling system that protects them from the heat of the engines with 400 t of water during take-off within 20 seconds.

For the final assembly and the final tests on the rockets, there are two 99.4 m and 96.6 m high spacecraft assembly buildings in the very north of the site, each with one that extends over almost the entire height, two times five-winged and a total of almost 800 t heavy steel doors are locked. The crane on the ceiling of the building can lift loads of up to 32 t. The two final assembly buildings are connected by a ground floor workshop building. The rockets, which are mounted on a mobile launch table weighing 1800 t, are driven from the spacecraft assembly building to the launch ramps 2.8 km away shortly before launch. To monitor the launches, the cosmodrome has its own control center, which receives the necessary data from the TT&C station on the bronze drum mountain. A separate workshop building is available for the final assembly of the payloads. In another building, the satellites, deep space probes etc. are then refueled and fitted into the payload fairing of the rocket.

These core facilities of the cosmodrome were all set up under the auspices of the Institute for Special Engineering Projects, Beijing (北京 特种 工程 设计 研究院, Pinyin Běijīng Tèzhǒng Gōngchéng Shèjì Yánjiūyuàn ), which is subordinate to the main witness office of the People's Liberation Army . For its part, the provincial government of Hainan expanded the port of Qinglan directly near Wenchang, as well as access roads, as well as the electricity and water supply, with parts of the new infrastructure being financed by the city of Wenchang, which borrowed heavily from the banks.

Use / rocket launches

From the Wenchang Cosmodrome, geosynchronous satellites, heavy satellites and space stations will be put into orbit and space probes will be sent into space. A start of manned missions would also be possible from Wenchang. The first take-off from the new facility took place on June 25, 2016 at 12:00 UTC with the maiden flight of Langer Marsch 7 . The first launch of a Long March 5 was on November 3, 2016. By May 2020, a total of seven rockets with at least 14 payloads had been launched from the Wenchang Cosmodrome. Two of these flights failed.

See also:

Wenchang International Space City

The provincial government intends to build the "International Space City Wenchang" (文昌 国际 航天城) around the cosmodrome. This consists on the one hand of a 403 hectare "cosmodrome supplement area" (航天 发射场 配套 区) at the northeast end of the beach of Dongjiao , with a theme park that is already in operation, luxury hotels for business travelers and simple accommodations for tourists grouped around an artificial lake a coconut palm forest. For this purpose, 18 smaller villages had to be relocated. The relevant negotiations were concluded on March 2, 2019; for non-resident landowners and overseas Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese, there was still a deadline of March 20, 2019 to file compensation claims.

In addition, in a second expansion phase, there will be a 1200 hectare “start-up area” (起步 区), where high-tech companies related to space travel will be located, including those from abroad. The start-up area is in turn divided into a sub-area west of Bamen Bay (八 门 湾 西 片区), i.e. near the large municipality of Wencheng, the seat of government of the city of Wenchang , and a sub-area with a data center for processing large amounts of data, around which IT- Companies should settle. One thinks here in particular of commercial applications of the Beidou satellite navigation system in connection with data supplied by the Yaogan earth observation satellites . One of the suggestions is, for example, that traffic management systems could be developed using artificial intelligence . The city of Wenchang is investing 1.2 billion yuan in the construction of the data center itself. The official start of the project was celebrated on April 13, 2020 with a festive ceremony in Wencheng, and the center operated by Wenchanger Raumfahrt Supercomputer KI-Technologie GmbH (文昌 航天 超 算 智慧 科技 有限公司) should be ready by the end of 2021. Then another 10 billion yuan will be invested in the “Artificial Intelligence Industrial Park” (文昌 航天 智慧 产业 园). The commercial area is also to contain a residential area with a sports center and a high school for the children of the workers and employees who work there.

The Hainan's provincial government hopes that one day 77,000 people will live in the space city and 89,000 people will work, some of them as commuters. First of all, however, the project is what is known in China as “building a nest to attract the phoenix” (筑巢引凤); Apart from Wenchanger Raumfahrt Supercomputer KI-Technologie GmbH, as of June 2020 there are only declarations of intent from a few companies, but no concrete investment commitments. On April 13, 2018, Xi Jinping gave a keynote address on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Hainan's provincial uprising that the International Space City of Wenchang should become a model project for the merger of the military and civilian sectors . Encouraged by this, the Hainan parliamentary group introduced the proposal at the 3rd plenary assembly of the 13th legislative period of the National People's Congress in May 2020 that the cosmodrome and the TT&C station on Bronze Drum Mountain should be opened to civil space companies, including those from abroad . To this end, the Commission for the Control and Administration of State Assets in Hainan should set up a new Centrally Managed Company to coordinate these activities.

See also

Web links

 Wikinews: Thousands of Chinese have to give way to space center  - news

Individual evidence

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