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China building base to boost spaceflight
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-19 15:18
China is building a new space center in Shanghai to boost its manned
spaceflight and satellite launching programs, an official newspaper said
Monday.
Visitors look at a scale model of the Long
March rocket that carried China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, into space
at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, Nov. 12, 2003.
[AP] | The new about 200-acre base will
consolidate and expand operations of the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight
Technology, the China Daily said.
The academy produced communications and fuel systems for China's first manned
spacecraft, the Shenzhou 5, which in October 2003 carried astronaut Yang Liwei
on a one-day Earth-orbit mission.
That mission made China the third country after the United States and Russia
to put a man into space, lending new prestige and momentum to the decades-old
military-linked space program.
The Shanghai academy also produces parts for China's latest-model Long March
2D rocket, along with the fuel module, power plant and communications system for
China's next manned spacecraft, the Shenzhou 6. That flight, scheduled for this
autumn, plans to send a pair of Chinese astronauts into space on a mission of up
to seven days.
The academy hopes to increase efficiency by concentrating Shanghai's
scattered space industry installations in the same area to provide research,
manufacturing and logistics facilities. It will also take on cooperative
projects with foreign partners through parent organization, the China Aerospace
Science and Technology Corporation, the China Daily said.
Parts of the base will open in 2007 with completion set for 2010, the
newspaper said. It said plans call also for a museum displaying parts of
rockets, satellites and other space aviation technology developed by the
academy.
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