China will launch two satellites within a year to probe and predict
geospace storms that could threaten spacecraft safety, a senior
scientist said Thursday in Beijing.
And it will be the first time European experiments will ever be
integrated with Chinese satellites, according to Liu Zhenxing,
chief scientist of China's Double Star Program, in an interview
with China Daily.
"We are testing eight pieces of equipment -- five from the European
Space Agency (ESA) -- to be flown on the first of the two Chinese
satellites in December," he said.
The "equatorial" satellite will be followed by a polar-range
satellite, which is scheduled to be launched in June -- both aboard
Chinese Long March 2C rockets, said Liu, also a member of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences.
The two satellites comprise the famous "Double Star Program" -- a
Chinese initiative to observe the Earth's geospace storms which
exploration satellites from other countries have failed to cover,
including those from ESA's Cluster II Mission, Liu said.
Geospace storms, including magnetic storms and storms of high
energy particles, account for 40 percent of the world's 6,000
glitches in satellite operations recorded so far, he said.
The ESA, which launched a mini-flotilla of four identical
spacecraft into elliptical orbits around the Earth in 2000, has
shown a keen interest in China's Double Star Program and offered to
cooperate, according to Liu.
Four years after Liu put forward the Double Star initiative in
1997, China's National Space Administration and the ESA signed an
agreement in Paris, pledging financial and technological
cooperation to turn it into a joint project.
Under the agreement, ESA will have 10 instruments included in the
Double Star project. They are identical to those currently flying
on the four Cluster spacecraft.
"We would hope to carry out a joint exploration of the magnetotail,
a region where storms of high energy particles are generated,"
explained Cluster Project Scientist Philippe Escoubet about one of
the scheme's objectives.
"When these particles reach Earth, they can cause power cuts,
damage satellites and disrupt communications."
By
combining the Double Star and Cluster satellites, scientists will
for the first time in history be able to probe space close to the
Earth from a six-dimensional perspective, and also better study the
effects of the Sun on the planet's environment, Liu said.
Asked if the returns of the studies will benefit the country's
ongoing manned space program, Liu said that in the long run,
research on space's unpredictable climate -- like geospace storms
during maximum solar exposure -- will help protect manned
spacecraft.
(China Daily July 4, 2003)