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)
