Shenzhou - Divine Military Vessel [Chinese spacecraft]

As the first Chinese astronauts rocket into orbit, their main concern will be completion of an ambitious programme of military experiments.

The forward, orbital module of the Shenzhou manned spacecraft was designed to accommodate a variety of mission equipment. The orbital module remains in orbit after the service module and re-entry capsule have returned to earth. This means the mission equipment installed correspond in capability to a large unmanned satellite. Shenzhou's two different primary payloads, both of them military, were not discussed by Chinese authorities until early 2003.

Shenzhou 1 through 4 flew with an electronic intelligence payload mounted on the nose. As analysed by veteran space-radio expert Sven Grahn, this consisted of two major components. UHF emission direction-finding was accomplished by three earth-pointing television-aerial type antennae deployed on long telescoping booms.

These would function in the UHF band between 300 and 1,000 Mhz, covering a variety of civilian and military emission sources. They were supplemented by seven horn antennae arranged in an arc. These would detect and localise radar transmissions. This combination would allow coverage of the entire earth below as the orbital module passed over the earth's surface.

Shenzhou 1 carried what was only a dummy or limited test payload. Shenzhou 2 and onward carried the complete ELINT package. Given that China had not previously flown a major ELINT satellite, this was an enormous leap in Chinese military surveillance from space. Each orbital module remains in space as long as eight months after the other modules return to earth. That means the orbital modules of the Shenzhou spacecraft have been scanning the earth 75% of the time, day in and day out, since Shenzhou 2 was launched in January 2001. Data is dumped in ten-minute bursts when the spacecraft pass over Miyun, near Beijing.

These missions would have given China's equivalent to the American National Security Agency an excellent introduction into capabilities and problems in flying an operational ELINT satellite over a variety of targets and seasons of the year. The main objective, as was the case for low-altitude Soviet systems, would be to keep track of the US Navy, particularly carrier groups. Observations by Shenzhou 4 during the Iraq War would have been an intelligence windfall for the Chinese.

The second military payload flown aboard Shenzhou is an imaging reconnaissance package. This consisted of two cameras with an aperture of 500 - 600 mm. One is mounted in the equipment package at the nose of the spacecraft, the other below it at what had been earlier thought to be the porthole above the orbital module's main hatch. The use of two differing cameras indicates a hyper-spectral, multi-resolution, combination mapping/close-look system. As reported in Space Daily last March, Zhang Houying of the Chinese Academy of Sciences gave the ground resolution of the close-look CCD camera as 1.6 m.

According to Zhang, the high-resolution imaging payload would first fly on Shenzhou 5, and the ELINT package flew as late as Shenzhou 4. He also reported that Shenzhou 5 would carry a docking system in addition to the camera system. This would seem to be contradictory, since the top camera would have to be mounted over the docking collar. Perhaps it was meant that only the porthole-mounted camera system would be flown. Study of photographs of specific Shenzhou spacecraft in assembly seem to indicate a different picture -- that Shenzhou 1 and 2 carried the ELINT payload, and 3, 4 the imaging payload.

In any case it may be inferred that the main mission of China's first manned spaceflight will be military imaging reconnaissance. If the pattern of the Shenzhou 3 and 4 flights is followed, the crew will be tasked to identify targets of interest and will fly in a controlled 331 x 337 km orbit for 107 revolutions, or 6.77 days. The orbital module would remain in orbit for up to eight months after the crew returns to earth.

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2 posted on 10/02/2003 12:16:06 PM PDT by Support Free Republic (Your support keeps Free Republic going strong!)

NASA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics better get off their butts and build us something that has excellent payload and also can be reused.
Because right now it looks like the Chinese are going to trump us on space exploration, number one.
Number two, all current 'orbital space plane' plans are unworkable and do not offer the capabilities we need.
Number three, there's too much apathy in the industry, way too much waste and pure lunacy going on.

3 posted on 10/02/2003 12:30:38 PM PDT by Darksheare (Terrorists. Tastes just like chicken. But needs bacon to go down well.)

China remains a nation run by and for its military. It will never truely move towards Democracy until it's generals are demoted from warlords to civil servants who defend a constitution rather than a party.

5 posted on 10/02/2003 12:34:35 PM PDT by .cnI redruM ("We hang petty thieves, we elevate the great ones to public office." Aesop, 600BC)

Oh thank you Bill Clinton - you sorry POS - you sold the little Chinese S/H's the chips and software necessary for the success of the commie rockets.

Clintoon the "first" Chinese president.

There is a very good chance, IMHO, that the American manned program will be outsourced to Russia and China and any other low bidders.

fyi, before the shuttle was grounded, many of its missions were military. Also, the shuttle would have been a smaller , less expensive craft, except that the military wanted it modified for their use.

Certainly, but the shuttle also had other purposes as well. The shuttle would never have been funded had it's sole purpose been to gather exospheric military intelligence.

The satalite imagery you see from GOES 7 and GOES 8 is partially the result of shuttle launches as well as the AGS monitoring of the O3 hole.

9 posted on 10/02/2003 1:38:37 PM PDT by .cnI redruM ("We hang petty thieves, we elevate the great ones to public office." Aesop, 600BC)

10 posted on 10/02/2003 2:22:53 PM PDT by BureaucratusMaximus (if we're not going to act like a constitutional republic...lets be the best empire we can be...)

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