Li Chunlai

Li Chunlai ( Chinese  李春來  /  李春来 , Pinyin Lǐ Chunlai * January 1965 in the county Huitong , province Hunan ) is a Chinese Astro chemist . He has been with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since January 2002 , and has been Deputy Director since June 1, 2013. Since 2004 he has been the technical director of the ground segment of the lunar program of the People's Republic of China , and since 2016 also commander of the ground segment of the Mars program . In spring 2019, a research group he led discovered while evaluating the data collected by the moon rover Jadehase 2 , coat material from a depth of more than 150 km.

Meteorite research

After graduating from high school, Li Chunlai first studied at the Faculty of Geology of the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy in Central and South China (中南 矿冶 学院, since 2000 part of the University of Central and South China ) in Changsha , where he graduated in 1985. He then worked from August 1985 to August 1988 as an assistant in the laboratory for rocks and minerals at the Academy for Soil Deposits and Geology of the Chinese umbrella company for the non-ferrous metal industry (中国 有色金属 工业 总公司). In August 1988, he began studying astrochemistry at the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guiyang . After completing his doctorate, he stayed at the institute and was appointed deputy science councilor with the rank of associate professor (副研究员) in October 1993, and in October 1995 he was appointed scientific councilor with the rank of professor (研究员).

From June 9, 1988 to December 4, 1993, Ouyang Ziyuan , one of China's leading meteorite researchers, was the director of the institute, and Li Chunlai also specialized in meteorites. In 1992 he discovered tiny tektites with a diameter of 65–220 μm in the loess of Luochuan County , in the north of Shaanxi Province , the age of which he was able to date to about 720,000–724,000 years based on the layer in which they were found. These tektites could therefore be assigned to the impact in the Bolaven Plateau in Laos . Until then, it was assumed, is that the Australasian stray field produced by this meteorite only up to a line Yunnan - Guangxi extended. Due to Li Chunlai's discovery, it now shifted significantly further north, which also opened up a new view of the global climate in the Middle Pleistocene . In contrast to the previously mostly black chinites, the glass beads discovered by Li Chunlai were mostly brown-yellow, some also greenish, white or transparent. In addition, Li Chunlai carried out mineralogical investigations on the Boxian meteorite, which fell on October 20, 1977 in the province of Anhui , especially on the oxygen isotopes it contained . He also participated in the categorization of the meteorites found by Chinese researchers at the South Pole.

Administrative work for the Chinese lunar program

From 1998, Li Chunlai and Ouyang Ziyuan worked on the basic concept of the lunar program of the People's Republic of China, its necessity, its feasibility and the scientific goals on behalf of the Chinese Academy of Sciences . He was one of the fathers of the three-step structure of the program. Li Chunlai was one of the scientists who determined which measuring instruments were necessary for the lunar exploration and how they should be distributed among the probes. In this context he was transferred in January 2002 from the Institute of Geochemistry to the National Astronomical Observatories in Beijing, which are also subordinate to the Academy of Sciences .

After Prime Minister Wen Jiabao officially launched the People's Republic of China's lunar program on January 24, 2004 with his signature on the report of the lunar exploration project leadership group, the National Defense Science, Technology and Industry Commission responsible for the program awarded Li Chunlai a medal for “Outstanding Merits about the project of an exploration of the moon by means of orbiting ”(对 绕 月 探测 工程 立项 有突出贡献). At the same time he was appointed technical director of the ground segment (地面 应用 系统 总设计师). While the Beijing Space Control Center and the Xi'an Satellite Control Center manage the probes themselves via the People's Liberation Army's deep space network - orbit tracking, telemetry and control during flight and landing as well as the movement of the rovers - the ground segment is responsible for the scientific payloads; there, the radioed raw data is converted into photos, maps, tables and diagrams. As part of the lunar program, the ground segment is subordinate to the center for lunar exploration and space projects of the National Space Agency , an alternative term used in the external image for the National Agency for Science, Technology and Industry in National Defense , which succeeded the Defense Technology Commission in 2008 . However, the data processing of the ground segment is based at the headquarters of the National Observatories of the Academy of Sciences in Beijing's Chaoyang district, plus large parabolic antennas at the outdoor observatories in Miyun and Kunming . Li Chunlai's job was to design the system, set up the facilities and ensure that it ran smoothly.

He did this very well. When the Defense Technology Commission set up a working group to plan the second and third phases of the lunar program (landing and return) after the successful Chang'e-1 mission in 2007, Li Chunlai was appointed deputy head of this working group and head of the expert group which should define the scientific goals as well as the requirements for the systems necessary to achieve these goals. For the Chang'e 5 mission , for example, a laboratory had to be set up at the headquarters of the national observatories, where the soil samples returned from the moon can be examined and stored, as well as an additional laboratory for the in an external location that complies with the disaster control regulations long-term ex situ storage of the samples. When it finally came to the concrete organization of the landing and return missions, Li Chunlai's mandate was continuously extended by the Defense Technology Authority - he is until today (2020) Technical Director of the ground segment of the lunar program of the People's Republic of China. At the National Astronomical Observatories of the Academy of Sciences, where he was appointed deputy director with retroactive effect from June 1, 2013, he is the head of the department for lunar and deep space exploration (月球 与 深 空 探测 研究 部), so too responsible for the Chinese Mars mission 2020 etc.

After the Working Group on the nomenclature of the planetary system (Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature) of the International Astronomical Union on 5 October 2015, the landing site of Chang'e-3 and three surrounding craters had given Chinese names, invited the original eight members - under including Harald Hiesinger, professor of geological planetology at the University of Münster - the existing commission for lunar nomenclature (Task Group for Lunar Nomenclature) in view of the Chinese contributions to lunar research and the planned projects in this field by Li Chunlai, as the ninth member of the To cooperate with the Commission. On December 17, 2015, this was approved by the Chinese side, and on January 4, 2016, he became an official member of the lunar naming commission. Li Chunlai was the first Chinese in the working group for the nomenclature of the planetary system. Later, Zhao Haibin (*, * 1975) from the observatory on the purple mountain came to the commission for small body nomenclature.

Lunar exploration

In addition to his administrative work, Li Chunalai also finds time for scientific work. In a way, he was returning to his old field, meteorite research and the study of ejecta. In spring 2019, a research group he led discovered while evaluating data that the moon rover Jadehase 2 had determined with its infrared spectrometer at the landing site of Chang'e-4 in the Von Kármán crater , rock material with an unusual chemical composition. Moon rocks of this kind had never been found before. Li Chunlai and his colleagues came to the conclusion that this was material from the lunar mantle , i.e. from a depth of more than 150 km, which had been ejected when the Finsen crater was formed about 1–3 billion years ago after a The South Pole Aitken Basin - the largest crater in the solar system with a diameter of 2,500 km - created a much more violent impact about 4 billion years ago and largely eroded the lunar crust (i.e. the uppermost layer of the moon).

The ground penetrating radar mounted on the underside of Jadehase 2 also delivered interesting results. This device is constantly in operation during the lunar day and takes a radar image of the lunar soil every 0.66 seconds along the route of the rover, i.e. about every 3.6 cm. It turned out that Chang'e-4 had landed on a layer of regolith at least 40 meters thick . An evaluation of the radar data from the first two working days on the moon, during which the rover carried out measurements over a distance of 106 m, showed that the regolith at this point is divided into three clearly distinguishable layers with embedded boulders of different sizes and densities is. This enabled direct observation of the overlaying and mixing process of ejecta from various meteorite impacts (Finsen, Von-Kármán-L, etc.), a process that was previously only tangible through model calculations.

Mars program

After Prime Minister Li Keqiang signed the funds for the Mars mission, then known as Yinghuo-2, on January 11, 2016 , Li Chunlai was appointed Deputy Technical Director of the Mars program of the People's Republic of China and commander of the program’s ground segment (中国 火星探测 工程 地面 应用 系统 总指挥). Like that of the lunar program, this is housed in the headquarters of the National Astronomical Observatories of the Academy of Sciences and shares resources with the latter, such as the receiving antennas in Miyun and Kunming. Due to the high volume of data during the 2020 Mars mission with its 13 payloads, and also because of the signal strength that decreases with the square of the distance, an additional antenna with a diameter of 70 m was built on the premises of the academy's navigation and communication center in Daliang near Tianjin . The biggest challenge for the ground segment was the relatively short time from the first groundbreaking in October 2018 to the planned pivoting of the probe into Mars orbit in February 2021. The construction of the support frame and the bowl at the 39th research institute of the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation was carried out in parallel and at the same time the foundation for the 2700 t antenna was created on site, it was possible to lift the dish onto the bogie on April 25, 2020 (a kind of " topping-out ceremony "). Since the peripheral devices were delivered at the same time, it is hoped to be able to start trial operation in October 2020.

Works

In addition to numerous articles in domestic and foreign magazines, Li Chunlai wrote the following books:

• 空间 化学 (space chemistry ). 哈尔滨 工业 大学 出版社, 哈尔滨 2004.
• 奔走 天地 间 (Between heaven and earth). 科学 出版社, 北京 2014.　
• 嫦娥 三号 着陆 区 地形 地貌 (On the topography of the Chang'e-3 landing site ). 测绘 出版社, 北京 2018.　

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 我国 2020 年 即将 发射 火星 探测器 ： 去 火星 探 什么？ In: news.cctv.com. August 23, 2016, accessed April 26, 2020 (Chinese). 
2. ↑ 李春 来 简历 个人 资料 简介. In: hnrlzysc.com. January 12, 2020, accessed March 20, 2020 (Chinese). 
3. ^ Former Directors. In: gyig.cas.cn. Retrieved March 20, 2020 . 
4. ↑ 李春 来 、欧阳自远 et al .: 黄土 中 微 玻璃 陨石 和 微 玻璃 球 的 发现 与 意义. In: kns.cnki.net. Retrieved March 21, 2020 (Chinese). 
5. ↑ Eraz: 玻璃 陨石 研究 简述. In: zhuanlan.zhihu.com. February 25, 2020, accessed March 21, 2020 (Chinese). 
6. ↑ 李春 来 简历 个人 资料 简介. In: hnrlzysc.com. January 12, 2020, accessed March 20, 2020 (Chinese). 
7. ↑ 李春 来. In: nao.cas.cn. October 23, 2013, accessed March 21, 2020 (Chinese). 
8. ↑ 裴 照 宇 et al .: 嫦娥 工程 技术 发展 路线. In: jdse.bit.edu.cn. June 2, 2015, accessed March 22, 2020 (Chinese). 
9. ↑ 崔 小 粟: 李春 来 、 薛 随 建 任 国家 天文台 副台长. In: renshi.people.com.cn. August 22, 2014, accessed March 22, 2020 (Chinese). 
10. ↑ 月球 与 深 空 探测 研究 部. In: nao.cas.cn. Retrieved March 22, 2020 (Chinese). 
11. ↑ Guang Han Gong in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the IAU (WGPSN) / USGS
12. ↑ 邱晨辉: 科学家 李春 来 成 国际 月 地 命名 委 首位 中国 成员. In: news.sina.cn. January 5, 2016, accessed March 22, 2020 (Chinese). 
13. ^ IAU Working Group and Task Group Members. In: planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov. Retrieved March 22, 2020 (English). 
14. ↑ 赵海斌. In: pmo.cas.cn. Retrieved March 23, 2020 (Chinese). 
15. ^ Chinese astronomers discover new asteroid to fly by Earth. In: xinhuanet.com. March 3, 2020, accessed on March 23, 2020 . 
16. ↑ ^{a b} Li Chunlai, Su Yan et al .: The Moon's farside shallow subsurface structure unveiled by Chang'E-4 Lunar Penetrating Radar. In: advances.sciencemag.org. February 26, 2020, accessed on March 23, 2020 . 
17. ↑ Li Chunlai et al .: Chang'E-4 initial spectroscopic identification of lunar far-side mantle-derived materials. In: nature.com. May 15, 2019, accessed on March 23, 2020 . 
18. ↑ 首次 火星 探测 任务 总设计师 张荣 桥 一行 调研 固体 所. In: issp.cas.cn. February 11, 2019, accessed June 7, 2020 (Chinese). 
19. ↑ 面积 有 9 个 篮球 场 大 火星 探测 数据 接收 70 米 天线 吊装 成功. In: spaceflightfans.cn. April 26, 2020, accessed April 27, 2020 (Chinese). 
20. ↑ “天 问 一号” 去 火星 地面 数据 接收 准备 好 了 么？ In: spaceflightfans.cn. April 26, 2020, accessed April 27, 2020 (Chinese). 

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Li is the family name here, Chunlai is the first name.