Enterprises provide boost for spacecraft

THE manned spaceship Shenzhou-15, atop the Long March-2F Y15 carrier rocket, blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on November 29.

Behind the successful launch, there was support from scientific re-search institutions and enterprises in Jiading.

The frequency synthesizer de-veloped by the team of Shanghai Aerospace Electronics Co Ltd is an important part of the Shenzhou-15 manned spacecraft.

“It mainly provides the electronic equipment on the spacecraft with a variety of frequencies, waveforms and high stability frequency refer-ence signals to ensure that each single machine can work effectively, which is equivalent to the heart of the spacecraft,” said chief designer Bao Yujie.

Also playing an important role in the Shenzhou-15 spaceship is the propulsion manager. It undertakes the task of collecting, converting and encoding all the temperature, pressure and related telemetry in-formation of the propulsion module subsystem of the spacecraft pro-pulsion subsystem, to ensure that astronauts can successfully “check into” the space station.

Ma Qiujun, the designer in charge of propulsion products, said the pro-pulsion manager uses the collected temperature data to complete the temperature control of the propul-sion cabin subsystem according to the set temperature control rules.

“This is equivalent to turning on the air conditioner for all pipelines of the propulsion cabin, heating it when it is cold, and cooling it when it is hot,” Ma said.

The achievements of scientific research institutes such as Shang-hai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Ji-ading have also been applied to the Shenzhou-15 spaceship.

The spacecraft is equipped with rendezvous and docking lights, or-bital and return module lights, plant experiment bags and nematode chip experiment boxes developed by Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics.

As the spacecraft will periodically pass through the shadow area of the Earth when in orbit, and experience a long time of darkness, lighting is very important when connecting with the space station.

While the rendezvous and docking lamp provides lighting for cameras, the orbital and return module lights provide illumination for astronauts to work and live in the module.

There are two sealed bags for plant experiment sampling, which help scientists to study the physi-ological mechanism of plants in microgravity environment.

The nematode chip experimental box is used to carry nematode sam-ples, and can realize the automatic cultivation, capture and release of nematodes, supporting the research and experiment of space radiation measurement and biological dam-age assessment.