Among the Shenzhou-16 crew, Gui, a professor at China’s prestigious aeronautics institution Beihang University who pursued his postdoctoral studies in Canada, is the first Chinese civilian to be on a spaceflight.
Highlights of Shenzhou-16 Mission
Photo: Zhang Jingyi
For the team lineup, the Shenzhou-16 for the first time includes a payload expert, Gui Haichao, along with flight engineer Zhu Yangzhu that will be led by veteran taikonaut Jing Haipeng, whose trip marks his fourth time in space. Jing will serve as the mission commander.
This is China's first time including a space engineer and a payload specialist as part of a Shenzhou crew. According to China Manned Space Agency, the space engineer's job will mainly focus on ensuring the normal operation of the spacecraft, performing necessary maintenance and inspection of spacecraft systems and equipment, including executing space walks.
While for payload specialist Gui Haichao, who has attracted the most public attention as the only non-career taikonaut to enter space, he will be responsible for managing and operating scientific researches and experimental projects in the space station, focusing mainly on the management and operation of payload.
During their mission, the Shenzhou-16 crew will continue to conduct extravehicular activities and cargo airlock extravehicular tasks, space science experiments, and the trial of new technology. The mission will also include platform management, taikonaut support system tests, and science education activities, the Global Times learned from China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).
This is the first manned space mission at the space station's application and development phase, and also the first radial rendezvous and docking performed under the T-structure formed by the three modules.
Compared with previous radial docking practices executed by the Shenzhou-13 and Shenzhou-14 spacecraft during the construction stage of the space station, the maneuver for this time will represent a more complex challenge, given the larger combination mass and size, and more intricate aerodynamic effects, the CASC revealed.
Specifically, with the successive joining of more modules and spacecraft including the extra-large Wentian and Mengtian lab modules, as well as manned and cargo spaceships, the space station's size, mass, inertia, and center of gravity have changed significantly, impacting the attitude control of docking vehicles, with some parameters even increasing by orders of magnitude.
Previously when the Shenzhou-14 manned spacecraft docked radially with the space station, it weighed only 47 tons. Now, the Shenzhou-16 will face a 90-ton space station complex with crew onboard.
Therefore, the Shenzhou-16 will use a relative attitude and position control manner, especially for close-range docking. The changes in motion characteristics of the space station will directly affect the spacecraft's rendezvous and docking control process.
As for the launch vehicle, deputy chief designer of the Long March-2F carrier rocket Liu Feng told the Global Times that they have made over 20 technical adjustments to improve rocket performance.
The development team has focused on improving redundancy and equipment advancement to continuously enhance the reliability of the rocket, Liu said, noting that the team has promoted the localization of various electrical system components on the rocket so as to further improve the level of independent control of the product.
The team also used digital and information technology to empower the rocket and introduced "intelligence" into data interpretation.
With the construction of remote measurement and launch support system, developers have achieved real-time communication of test data for the Long March-2F rocket, so that ground control personnel can more easily and comprehensively receive relevant data from the rocket, and carry out real-time monitoring and analysis meanwhile displaying it on the shared screen simultaneously.
This photo taken on May 28, 2023 shows a C919, China's self-developed large passenger aircraft, getting ready for its first commercial flight in east China's Shanghai. C919 kicked off its first commercial flight from Shanghai to Beijing on Sunday, marking its official entry into the civil aviation market. (Xinhua)
China's C919 passenger plane completes inaugural commercial flight, showing China's efforts in self-innovation in high-end manufacturing industry
C919, China's self-developed large passenger aircraft, completed its inaugural commercial flight from Shanghai to Beijing on Sunday, creating a milestone in China's aviation industry, which aims to compete with global players such as Boeing.
Developed by Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), the C919 aircraft, China's first self-developed large jet airliner, is important proof of China's strength in self-innovation in the high-end manufacturing industry, and its solid market performance will foster further confidence in future orders and among customers, Chinese experts said.
The C919's inaugural flight departed at 10:32 am from Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport and landed at Beijing Capital international Airport at 12:31 pm, where it was welcomed with a special water-salute ceremony.
The highly anticipated flight, codenamed MU9191 flying from Shanghai to Beijing was flown by China Eastern Airlines, and carried around 130 passengers.
"More than 20 years ago, I heard many people in the aviation field talking about their dream of making a big plane. I am so excited to be one of the first passengers to fly on the C919," a passenger named Shi Ding told the Global Times on Sunday.
Shi said he arrived at the Shanghai airport at 7:40 in the morning, and there were around 500 people attending the inaugural ceremony. "I have been closely watching the development of C919 for years. As an aviation fan, I am so proud that China now has such an advanced aircraft manufacturing industry."
The video clips he sent to the Global Times showed passengers waving national flags and the cabin filled with a euphoric atmosphere, with excited passengers taking photos and shooting videos. The carrier even prepared meals selected by poll by the passengers.
Both the business and economy class on the C919 use a new generation of domestically designed and produced cabin seats. Among them, eight business class seats use an all-aluminum alloy frame structure with a cradle design and a backrest that can reach 120 degrees. The distance between the front and rear seats exceeds 1 meter.
The C919 cabin has a width of 2.25 meters, and the middle seat in the economy class triple seat is 1.5cm wider than the two seats on the end, bringing passengers more comfort.
The C919 project was launched in 2007 and completed its first test flight in 2017. On September 29, 2022, it obtained the Type Certificate from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the country's aviation sector regulator.
With between 158 and 168 seats, and a flight range of 4,075 to 5,555 kilometers, the C919 is designed to have the same level of specifications as the popular Airbus 320 and Boeing 737.
According to China Eastern Airlines' plan, the first C919 plane will initially be operated between Shanghai and Chengdu, capital city of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, before flying more routes.
China Eastern has also set up special teams including cabin services to ensure security and guarantee services.
New starting point
"Based on earlier full preparations, the maiden flight is a new starting point for China Eastern," Li Yangmin, vice chairman of the Shanghai-based China Eastern Airlines Corp, was quoted as saying at the inaugural ceremony held in Shanghai on Sunday.
Li said the airline will take this commercial operation as an opportunity, and strive to meet market demand with high-quality supply, allowing people in China and even around the world to use the plane.
Before the flight, other Chinese airlines also expressed interest in the plane. On Thursday, Ma Chongxian, chairman of Air China Ltd, said that in 2010 the company signed a purchase agreement with COMAC for 20 C919 aircraft, and continued to pay attention to the progress of the C919.
China Southern Airlines vice chairman Han Wensheng said on the same say that his company is paying great attention to the C919 aircraft and maintaining close communication with COMAC.
COMAC said in January that the company expects to reach an annual production capacity of 150 C919 planes within five years, and has already received more than 1,200 orders, according to media reports.
Chinese experts said that the commercial fight is of great significance to China's equipment manufacturing industry, as the civil aircraft manufacturing industry is a symbol of a country's technological and industrial strength.
For China's aviation manufacturing industry, China's commercial aviation must have its own place in the world, in terms of not only market size and development potential, but also equipment manufacturing, Wang Ya'nan, chief editor of Beijing-based Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times. "We must have our own manufacturing capabilities for regional aircraft and large commercial airliners," he noted.
We should focus on core technologies in key fields and continue to work together to tackle bottleneck problems, we must put safety and reliability first and eliminate all potential hazards, and we must do a good job in the large aircraft sector, said China's top leadership at the end of September last year that when the C919 passenger jet was issued the type certificate by China's civil aviation regulator, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
COMAC, the developer of the plane, extended its warm congratulations over the flight on its WeChat account with a line from an ancient poem that translates as "Till the day the strangled dragon vibrates in fresh rainfall, it will surely roar to the sky like a flying crane."
Photo: Courtesy of China Eastern Airlines
Global competition
Hours after the conclusion of the inaugural commercial flight, global plane manufacturers sent messages of congratulation.
"On the occasion of the successful commercial maiden flight of C919 today, we would like to extend our sincere congratulations to China Eastern Airlines and COMAC," Boeing said on its official WeChat account, while Airbus also sent warm congratulations to China Eastern Airlines C919 on successfully completing its first commercial flight.
In an earlier interview with Global Times in April, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said that COMAC has brought new competition to the market. "We have great respect for any competitor in the market," he said.
The C919's first commercial flight means that China's extraordinary aviation capabilities have started to accept the challenges of the market, Qi Qi, an independent market watcher, told the Global Times on Sunday.
With the accumulation of flight hours, there will be more confidence in potential orders and among customers, as well as more growth in the entire large aircraft industry chain, Qi remarked.
A market forecast report released by COMAC in 2021 predicted that China's aviation market will receive 9,084 passenger aircraft with more than 50 seats over the next 20 years, with a value of about $1.4 trillion. It is widely believed that a trillion-dollar level aircraft industry chain is gaining momentum with the commercialization of the C919.
As for future flights, Qi said it is still too early to talk about exploring the international market at this stage.
Prior to this, it is necessary to obtain airworthiness certifications from the civil aviation authorities of other countries, and obtaining the type certification from Federal Aviation Administration and European Union Aviation Safety Agency will be an important indicator of how the C919 will explore the international market, Qi said.
It has been predicted that the C919 will still face many difficulties amid a changing international political backdrop, and the difficulties may be even greater than expected. As a strategic project of China's national aviation industry, the goal of the C919 will not waver, Wang said. China will mobilize and pool all its scientific research and industrial resources to push this project to a successful end.
"For a developing country like China, which is under enormous development pressure, we have no other choice but to face up to the difficulties," Wang noted.
The domestically-manufactured aircraft C919 successfully completed its maiden commercial flight on Sunday, marking its official
entry into the civil aviation market.
BEIJING: Northwestern Beijing’s Zhongguancun, known as “China’s Silicon Valley,” currently finds itself at the nexus of world attention on scientific and technological innovation.
Running from May 25 to 30, the ongoing 2023 Zhongguancun (ZGC) Forum being held in the Chinese capital’s innovation hub, has drawn top scientists, institutions, and well-known innovation and entrepreneurship entities from across the world to discuss international cooperation on scientific and technological development.
Decades ago, people who lived here never imagined that this formerly suburban community of Beijing could command the world’s attention one day, nor could they foresee a national high-tech industrial development zone rising from their farming fields.
Last year, there were 4,244 companies in Zhongguancun with annual revenue exceeding 100 million yuan (US$14.13mil or RM65mil), which is 2.2 times that of 2012. Among them, 11 companies surpassed the trillion-yuan revenue mark.
Over time, Zhongguancun has become a flag-bearer of China’s innovation, bearing witness to the rapid development of Chinese technology, with the continuous emergence of significant sci-tech innovations, increasing investment in research and development, continuous improvement of innovation mechanisms and strengthened international cooperation.
China’s remarkable expertise and extensive experience, combined with its longstanding commitment to technological innovation, position it to make unique contributions to the world by sharing its technological achievements and experience, said Bill Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at the forum.
Rise of Zhongguancun
From the sparsely populated outskirts of Beijing to an electronics industry cluster in the 1980s, and then to a national-level innovation hub and China’s highland of sci-tech development, Silicon Valley’s Chinese counterpart has emerged as a symbol of innovation and has been dubbed a remarkable chapter in the history of China’s reform and opening up due to its pioneering spirit.
It was not until 1988 that the first privately owned high-tech firm was registered in Zhongguancun.
The enterprise, named Yonyou, obtained the science park’s first private enterprise license, numbered “SY0001.” Over the past decades, Yonyou developed from a two-person software service company into a leading provider of enterprise cloud services.
Wang Wenjing, Yonyou’s chairman and CEO, still remembers this milestone day for Zhongguancun. “That day, I slipped out of the office where I was working to attend the inaugural meeting of Zhongguancun becoming the Beijing New Technology Industry Development Pilot Zone. It was so exciting,” recalled Wang.
In Zhongguancun, a wave of innovations and many “world’s first” breakthroughs have emerged in frontier technological fields in the past decade, while a batch of homegrown sci-tech industry leaders such as Xiaomi, Baidu and BOE are at the forefront of sectors such as smart manufacturing, deep learning, and semiconductor displays.
In Zhongguancun National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone, the total revenue of enterprises reached 8.7 trillion yuan (RM5.7 trillion) in 2022, which is 3.5 times that of 2012. Value added in 2021 hit 1.3 trillion yuan (RM847bil), marking 3.4-fold growth compared to 2012.
Measures supporting the establishment and development of foreign-invested research and development centres have been introduced in the zone, attracting over 300 multinational companies to set up regional headquarters and research centres. More than 130 Fortune Global 500 companies have established branch offices in the zone.
Riding on the rapid development of Zhongguancun, Beijing has established itself as a crucial hub in the global innovation network, with nearly a hundred universities and over a thousand research institutes, which not only provide support for its own economic and social development but also inject sustained momentum into global progress and development.
Ranking third globally in the number of “unicorn” companies and topping the Nature Index global science city rankings six consecutive times, Beijing has demonstrated its prowess in sci-tech advancements, witnessing the emergence of world-class innovations in fields such as quantum information and artificial intelligence, said Yin Li, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and secretary of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee.
As the beating heart of the innovative city, Zhongguancun drove the rapid advancement of Chinese technology and transformed the forum into an international platform for China’s active engagement in global scientific and technological innovation.
“Since its inception in 2007, 13 editions of the ZGC Forum have been held successfully, serving as a vital international platform for China’s active involvement in global scientific and technological innovation, and its extensive participation in global science and technology governance,” said Wu Zhaohui, vice-minister of science and technology.
Shared future
At the peak of a new round of sci-tech revolution and industrial transformation, Beijing gives full play to its strengths in education, science, technologies and talent, coordinates sci-tech and institutional innovation, accelerates the construction of a world-leading sci-tech park, and aims at the leading positions in future-oriented sectors.
Beijing’s efforts in technological innovation are propelling China’s societal transformation and upgrading in various aspects, from people’s lifestyles to business models, from state governance to entertainment, while also providing momentum for global economic and social development.
During the 2020 Zhongguancun Forum, Long Guilu, the deputy-director of the Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Science and a professor at Tsinghua University, unveiled the world’s first practical prototype for direct quantum communication.
At the exhibition area of this year’s ZGC Forum, a myriad of intelligent technological products and applications, including painting robots, surgical robots, robotic butlers, intelligent coal mining and online hospitals, are shaping a promising vision of future life for people from across the globe.
More and more global players in different sectors eye the huge advantages of the Zhongguancun area, and choose to create in China for the world. Among the trendsetters is the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi.
“China has emerged as Sanofi’s second-largest market and remains a core strategic market, playing a pivotal role in driving future growth,” said Zhu Hailuan, the vice-president of Sanofi Greater China, adding that the company has established an Internet hospital team, and is actively pursuing digital transformation to better address the healthcare needs of Chinese patients.
Speaking to Xinhua, Zhu stated that the company is delighted to see the development of an innovative ecosystem in the field of biotechnology in China, thanks to the growing emphasis on technological innovation by the Chinese government at all levels in recent years.
Zhongguancun’s unleashed innovation potential has also made it a magnet for global scientists and researchers. Xie Xiaoliang, a pioneer of single-molecule biophysical chemistry, coherent Raman scattering microscopy and single-cell genomics, returned to Zhongguancun in 2018 after being a faculty member at Harvard University for two decades.
“Science is the foundation for addressing all kinds of transformations. It is the mission of scientists, as well as the epochal significance of the ZGC Forum, to utilise scientific innovation for the betterment of humanity,” Xie noted — China Daily/ANN
China is making clear its unwavering commitment to openness and global cooperation in scientific and
technological innovation with two major tech forums that have brought together businesses and scholars from around the world, in a resounding
rejection of the US' attempt to smear and contain China.
Photo: Courtesy of China Eastern Airlines
