The astronaut can make emergency escapes when a danger occurs from the very beginning of the liftoff, according to top designers of China's manned space flight program Thursday.
Yang Liwei, the first Chinese astronaut sent into space, has flown back to Earth safely. His safe return proved that China-madespace systems are of high quality, secure and highly reliable, and even if some emergencies, there are carefully planned precautions for escaping for the life safety of the astronaut, according to the designers.
"Although the Long March II F rocket has a 100 percent successful launch rate, we have to be cautious because the blastoff is the most dangerous stage of the whole mission," Liu Zhusheng, chief designer of the rocketry system, told Xinhua. The spaceship is enclosed within the escape tower atop the rocket, which is used to make an emergency getaway, according to Liu. Once troubles occur, the rocket's malfunction-detecting system will give an escape order to the escape tower, whose engines ignite immediately to pull the orbital and re-entry modules off from the rocket and land with a parachute.
When the rocket goes up 39 kilometers at 110 seconds from the liftoff, the escape tower will be deserted to make the rocket lighter. At this time the spacecraft retains four engines at its flaring that can function likewise as the escape tower in case the rocket get in trouble, Liu said.
At 200 seconds from the liftoff and at an altitude of 100 kilometers, the craft's flaring will also be given up. If problems happen thereabouts, the spacecraft's own engines will ignite to disengage the craft from the rocket, and send it into the orbit.
The first astronaut stayed in space in less than 24 hours, orbiting the earth 14 times, and returned. During each earth-orbiting, the Chinese astronaut can conduct emergency returns any time back to atmosphere, if there could have occurred any risks of mechanical problems, meteorolites and body discomforts,
"If problems arose, either the ground control center could issue orders to activate the spaceship to respond, or the astronaut himself could exercise emergency operations on his own,” I Faren, the chief designer of the spacecraft system.
"Assuring a successful escape, we have chosen emergency landing areas corresponding to the craft's different locations on each earth-orbiting, with the use of the preset landing data that had been input into the computer system of the spaceship," Hou Ying, chief designer of the landing system, said.
If the spaceship returned on emergencies, it would have been unable to land on the priority landing zone in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. "If so, there must be some problems that have endangered the life of the astronaut, which urges a quick response by the rescue team to reach the emergency landing site very soon," Hou said, who presided over the construction of the emergency landing rescue system.
The landing is likely in three areas: on land, on water and in overseas regions. There are four land-bound landing areas: the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Yinchuan the capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Yulin City in Shaanxi Province and Handan City in Hebei province. They forms, if combined into a whole, a 1,860-km-long and 100-km-wide belt, and in each area there is a rescue team with two helicopters and rescue vehicles in hand, according to Hou.
There are three maritime rescue zones: all being 100 kilometers wide and each having a length of 955 kilometers, 800 kilometers and 360 kilometers respectively. "In each zone there are naval helicopters and rescue vessels from the Ministry of Communications, carrying specially developed equipment capable to retrieve the re-entry module in complicated conditions," Hou said.
A rescue squad stands by near the launch site in Jiuquan. If the re-entry module landed on unexpected areas in Chinese territory, the squad's two Yun-8 cargo planes and two paratroops will fly immediately to the landing spot, and will airdrop technicians and doctors to help the astronaut. At the meantime, a large plane carrying an astronaut-transport vehicle, an engineering vehicle and a search-command vehicle will fly to the nearest airport at the landing site to launch search work at the same time, Hou told Xinhua.
According to Hou, the spaceship will land within Chinese territory if in the second and third circle of its 14 earth orbiting, but after that it will land in overseas regions, with a total of over 10 countries to be involved such as Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Egypt, Iraq, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and the United States. Chinese diplomatic missions in these countries have noted their governments which have promised to offer the rescue and search help.
(Xinhua News Agency October 16, 2003)
