Wonder if they sent Bill Clinton and Loral an invite to the Launch?
Aviation Week & Space Technology
October 20, 2003
Pg. 26
Chinese Milspace Ops
Military technology development is a key goal of Shenzhou program
By Craig Covault, Cape Canaveral
Chinese military space research and development hardware has been flown on previous unmanned Shenzhou test flights, and the Chinese can be expected to assess the military value of humans in orbit as they continue the program, U.S. defense sources said.
They also noted that while both the U.S. and Russia have found human presence of minimal military value in overall cost versus benefit tradeoffs, the Chinese appear set on pursuing their own military-man-in-space assessments, which for now at least are unencumbered by the same budget constraints faced by the U.S. and Russia.
The People's Liberation Army strictly controls the Shenzhou program, and the military hardware could be carried to test system designs planned for later deployment on unmanned spacecraft as well as demonstrate operational manned-mission capability.
One indication of Shenzhou military operations was likely the electronics carried on the nose of the Shenzhou 3 orbital module that functioned autonomously in space for six months following the return to Earth of the descent module after seven days aloft in March 2002. The Chinese have said the spacecraft carried Earth-science radiometer equipment.
But an analysis performed by Sven Grahn, vice president for engineering at the Swedish Space Corp., and other sources indicate the Shenzhou 3 mission could also have carried a significant electronic intelligence eavesdropping payload. The system could have recorded UHF and radar emissions applicable to a variety of military uses including ocean surveillance.
U.S. defense sources concurred on the possibility of this mission activity.
Grahn has extensive experience in China and is one of only a few westerners to have spent several weeks at the Jiuquan launch site. He was Sweden's program and engineering manager for the Swedish Freja magnetospheric spacecraft launched there on a Long March 2 booster in 1992.
A diagram of Shenzhou 3's nose array shows what looks like three stacked seven-element log-periodic antennas mounted at the front of the orbital module (see p. 27).
"The antennas point toward the Earth . . . and seem to be linearly polarized," Grahn said in his analysis. "One of the three antennas has its polarization plane orthogonal to that of the two others.
"Therefore, it seems that two co-polarized antennas [worked] as an interferometer, while the orthogonal antenna could perhaps be used to determine the polarization of the incoming wave." Grahn said these and other large deployable whip antennas displayed on the nose, but not shown in the diagram, "seemed to be designed for a frequency range around 300-1000 MHz."
This Aviation Week & Space Technology editor examined a similar array mounted on the nose of a full-scale engineering model of the Shenzhou at the Shanghai Academy of Space Technology plant in Shanghai (AW&ST Nov. 12, 2001, p. 53). The several Chinese escorting that visit declined all comment on the hardware, however.
Aviation Week & Space Technology
October 20, 2003
Pg. 26
Chinese Milspace Ops
Military technology development is a key goal of Shenzhou program
By Craig Covault, Cape Canaveral
Chinese military space research and development hardware has been flown on previous unmanned Shenzhou test flights, and the Chinese can be expected to assess the military value of humans in orbit as they continue the program, U.S. defense sources said.
They also noted that while both the U.S. and Russia have found human presence of minimal military value in overall cost versus benefit tradeoffs, the Chinese appear set on pursuing their own military-man-in-space assessments, which for now at least are unencumbered by the same budget constraints faced by the U.S. and Russia.
The People's Liberation Army strictly controls the Shenzhou program, and the military hardware could be carried to test system designs planned for later deployment on unmanned spacecraft as well as demonstrate operational manned-mission capability.
One indication of Shenzhou military operations was likely the electronics carried on the nose of the Shenzhou 3 orbital module that functioned autonomously in space for six months following the return to Earth of the descent module after seven days aloft in March 2002. The Chinese have said the spacecraft carried Earth-science radiometer equipment.
But an analysis performed by Sven Grahn, vice president for engineering at the Swedish Space Corp., and other sources indicate the Shenzhou 3 mission could also have carried a significant electronic intelligence eavesdropping payload. The system could have recorded UHF and radar emissions applicable to a variety of military uses including ocean surveillance.
U.S. defense sources concurred on the possibility of this mission activity.
Grahn has extensive experience in China and is one of only a few westerners to have spent several weeks at the Jiuquan launch site. He was Sweden's program and engineering manager for the Swedish Freja magnetospheric spacecraft launched there on a Long March 2 booster in 1992.
A diagram of Shenzhou 3's nose array shows what looks like three stacked seven-element log-periodic antennas mounted at the front of the orbital module (see p. 27).
"The antennas point toward the Earth . . . and seem to be linearly polarized," Grahn said in his analysis. "One of the three antennas has its polarization plane orthogonal to that of the two others.
"Therefore, it seems that two co-polarized antennas [worked] as an interferometer, while the orthogonal antenna could perhaps be used to determine the polarization of the incoming wave." Grahn said these and other large deployable whip antennas displayed on the nose, but not shown in the diagram, "seemed to be designed for a frequency range around 300-1000 MHz."
This Aviation Week & Space Technology editor examined a similar array mounted on the nose of a full-scale engineering model of the Shenzhou at the Shanghai Academy of Space Technology plant in Shanghai (AW&ST Nov. 12, 2001, p. 53). The several Chinese escorting that visit declined all comment on the hardware, however.