Space technologies developed in decades-long research are closely related to human life as many have been used or will be used to improve our life, said a leading Chinese space scientist Saturday.
Many space technologies have been used in our daily life, said Hu Wenrui, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. For example, meteorological satellite helps human forecast natural disasters in advance and communications satellite communicates the whole world into a "global village".
"Space astronomy, purely scientific part of space sciences, works to discover how universe operates and evolves, to help humans understand basic concepts about universe. Such findings will directly change our knowledge system. It's closely linked with everyone," said Hu.
Space Sciences fall into five categories, namely, space astronomy, space physics, moon and broader space exploration, geoscience, life science and micro-gravity science.
Life science and micro-gravity science, seemingly far away from daily life, has profound impact once relevant technologies are applied, said Hu, who is also an academician with the International Academy of Astronautics.
He said that protein, basic substance to form life, is barely understood by humans, who only know the functions of a certain type of protein, but not its structure. Less than one hundredth of millions of proteins in a human body have been found out.
In a micro-gravity space environment, protein can develop large crystal for structural analysis. Successful analysis of one protein, if applied to medicine development, can greatly shorten a new medicine R&D time and improve its quality.
In making alloy, space material science is highly helpful. drops blending two liquids are found to move according to the law of capillary traction, which can be controlled under micro-gravity circumstances to produce highly-even alloy.
Noting that three men went to space as tourists, Hu said: "our exploration of the space has dual purposes. One is to get energy and resources, the other is to migrate people if necessary. It is far from being realized, but the day will come."
(Xinhua News Agency October 15, 2005)
