China’s Space Capabilities
Like aviation technologies, many space technologies are inherently dual-use. The development of capabilities to produce civilian space sys-tems, therefore, contributes to China’s capability to produce military space systems. Launch vehicles can be used to launch military as well as civilian satellites, and communications, weather, earth-observation, and navigation satellites can be used for military or civilian purposes. Military missiles, even ballistic missiles, generally use different types of rocket motors and launch methods than space launch vehicles, but certain components, such as guidance and control systems, may be similar.
Foreign involvement in China’s space industry is significantly less than in the aviation manufacturing industry. China is not closely integrated into the supply chains of foreign space companies, and the market for Chinese products and services such as space launches and satellites is small. Although China’s space launch vehicles were origi-nally based on ballistic-missile technology transferred from the Soviet Union, China has advanced far beyond that technology through its own efforts, and foreign assistance has been limited. Chinese space compa-nies have received technical assistance from foreign entities in some specific areas, such as Russian assistance in the area of manned space- flight, Brazilian assistance in the development of earth-observation satellites, German assistance in the development of communications satellites, and U.S. assistance in launch-vehicle technology. In most cases, however, the advancement of China’s space technology has been the result of purely domestic efforts.
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China has made significant progress in advancing its space capa-bilities over the past decade and is making concerted efforts to further expand them. All relevant metrics reveal an accelerating growth trend in the country’s civilian and military space program development. In 83 known spacecraft launches between October 20, 1996, and June 15, 2010, Chinese launch vehicles experienced only one failure—an incomplete burn of a third stage that resulted in an Indonesian com-munications satellite being put in the wrong orbit in August 2009 (“Long March [Chang Zheng],” 2010). The 83 launches included three successful launches of manned spacecraft, the most recent of which, in September 2008, involved a spacewalk, and two lunar orbiters (“Shen-zhou Series,” 2009; “Chang’e Series,” 2010).
中国航空网 www.aero.cn
航空翻译 www.aviation.cn
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