If something big doesn't happen, how can we attract avid space fans?On December 15, the Long March 5 Yao-6 rocket successfully launched the remote sensing 41 satellite into the scheduled orbit. As someone who has been following China's space industry, I suddenly felt that something was wrong. This is no ordinary launch mission, after all, the "Fat Five" has not been in battle for three years. This leaves me with two questions.
The mission is scheduled for December 2023 and is not on the list of publicly available missions. Then it is not a lunar exploration, nor is it a practice or test satellite, let alone a fire exploration, so what is it going to carry?
When the Long March 5 was preparing for launch, I rarely saw on-site shooting**. It wasn't until the refill task that I noticed that the fairing looked a little sharper. Isn't this mission particularly special?
Through the live broadcast, I finally realized. It turned out that this mission was different, mainly in the fairing part. According to reports, the Long March 5 launch vehicle is usually equipped with a diameter of 52 meters with a height of 12267 meters fairing. For the first time, the launch rocket used a newly developed fairing with a diameter of 52 meters, and the height increased to 185 meters.
It's really exciting to see what a change!Such changes will inevitably bring more new breakthroughs and developments. As a space fan, I am looking forward to the next mission even more, and I hope to bring us more surprises and achievements!The Long March 5 Yao-6 rocket is an "extended version", indicating that it has a larger capacity and is capable of carrying more cargo.
* The answer is given, the payload of this mission is the "Remote Sensing 41" satellite, which is a large high-orbit optical remote sensing satellite. The main purpose of this satellite is to carry out land census, crop yield estimation, environmental management, meteorological early warning and forecasting, and comprehensive disaster prevention and mitigation. There is no doubt that this is very important for our country, which is a large agricultural country.
Remote sensing satellites are no strangers to them, as they play a vital role in agriculture. After all, agriculture is essential for a country. For agriculture-related satellites, they must have sufficient loading capacity to meet the needs of China's agricultural development. And now, we see that the Long March 5 Yao-6 rocket has become sharper and longer, which is to better cope with the needs of carrier satellites and be able to carry more payloads.
Based on my experience as a truck loader, when the carrying capacity is limited, we tend to load extra-wide and extra-long cargo in order to maximize the use of space. In this case, the loaded goods tend to be "bubble cargo", that is, goods that are relatively large in size but relatively light in weight.
From this point of view, we can speculate that the remote sensing 41 satellite carried by the Long March 5 Yao-6 rocket may also be similar. Considering that it was developed by the Fifth Academy of Astronautics, as a half-baked aerospace enthusiast, I can preliminarily judge that this satellite should be a combined satellite, which will be assembled in high orbit and verify its assembly capability in orbit.
There are three main reasons for this speculation: on the one hand, the Long March 5 Yao-6 rocket is called an "extended version", indicating that it has a larger capacity than a large satellite;At the same time, the application scope of the remote sensing satellite No. 41 involves many fields such as land census, crop yield estimation, environmental governance, meteorological early warning and forecasting, and comprehensive disaster prevention and mitigation, which requires sufficient loading capacityMoreover, the satellites developed by the Fifth Academy of Astronautics are often relatively advanced and complex, so there is the possibility of in-orbit assembly.
The successful case of China's space station provides a solution to the problem that China's high-orbit and high-resolution satellites are in high demand and the launch cost is too high. That is, by building a satellite space station to meet the needs of various detection capabilities, there is no longer a need to fold antennas or relaunch satellites with different detection capabilities. This approach is very feasible.
At the same time, China's in-orbit rendezvous capacity is already very strong, and the implementation of satellite Internet is underway. Therefore, it is imperative to form a high-orbit high-resolution satellite constellation. We can use our country's maximum carrying capacity rocket to transport satellite assemblies that can be assembled in orbit, and this is an excellent time.
In fact, on March 30 this year, the National Key R&D Program "Supporting Large-scale Multi-mission High Orbit Satellite Platform Technology for In-orbit Assembly" project was launched in Shanghai. The project was undertaken by the leaders of the Eighth Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, and the Fifth and Ninth Institutes were responsible for the overall implementation of the technology. The main goal of the project is to build a space-based high-resolution satellite constellation, implement the plan of "supporting the assembly of large-scale multi-mission high-orbit satellite platforms in orbit", and further improve the technical level of high-orbit multi-mission remote sensing satellites.
Among the many satellite research institutes in our country, there is a very well-known unit, that is, the 59th Institute. In fact, it is the Shanghai Satellite Engineering Research Institute, which is a subordinate unit of the Eighth Aerospace Research Institute. This has a pivotal position in the field of satellites, because they have developed many high-orbit earth observation satellites, among which Fengyun-4 is the most representative. In addition, they have built a series of high-orbit satellite platforms, the most representative of which is the SAT5000. These achievements have laid a solid foundation for us to further develop new and assembleable high-orbit satellite platforms.
Speaking of this project, it is a very interesting innovation. In this project, astronauts are not involved, but adopt the methods of automatic rendezvous and docking in orbit, automatic capture and autonomous assembly. In this way, it is possible to form a combined spacecraft. While this combined spacecraft doesn't have to be heavy, it can be very, very large and complex, even larger than the International Space Station. The combined spacecraft also has a robotic arm that can perform extremely sophisticated space observation and communication tasks. Moreover, it can also accept docking, complete module updates, and enable regular visits and on-orbit refueling.
For the sake of everyone's memory, we can give this project a name, tentatively called the "Satellite South Tianmen Project". This plan is actually to apply for the 2022 annual project of the "Earth Observation and Navigation" key project, which is part of China's "14th Five-Year Plan" national key research and development plan.
Therefore, the lead unit and the implementing unit must fully consider the relevant assessment indicators. It should be said that the project "Supporting large-scale multi-mission high-orbit satellite platform technology for in-orbit assembly" in the application guidelines has clear indicators, as shown in the figure below. Validation work is required before the project can be implemented. It happened that the Long March 5 made its first move to warm up for the "Chang'e-6" mission in 2024. In this way, we discovered the existence of the telemetry forty-one satellite.
Through the public **, we can understand the design scheme of the Long March 5** fairing. Judging from the map, it happens to be a combination of two satellites, and although the weight is not large, the height is really high. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Long March 5 has become an "extended version".
The telemetry 41 satellite not only has the detection capability, but also has an important task, that is, to verify the in-orbit combination capability and conduct the first verification for the future construction of the "satellite version of the Nantianmen Plan". Just like "Tiangong-1" is for "China's space station", is it a milestone that we should keep in mind?
Thank you, friends, the above are just some speculations from aerospace fans, and the truth needs to be officially announced. After all, space fans are always full of ideas, and even if they don't actually make a model, they can use CG technology to simulate it. Therefore, before ending this article, I would like to invite you to enjoy it as a story. Thank you again for your support!