Behind 100% success

Source: Economic Daily

At 9:43 on June 23, 2020, accompanied by a huge roar and people's cheers, the Long March 3B carrier rocket spewed out a raging flame, holding up the 55th satellite of the Beidou satellite navigation system and breaking through the sky. Subsequently, the satellite successfully entered the predetermined orbit and the launch was a complete success. So far, the Xichang Satellite Launch Center has delivered a perfect answer to the motherland and the people with 100% success in 20 years and a total of 44 Beidou launches.

Behind the miracle that has attracted worldwide attention, it is full of thorns and bumps, and it also highlights the mission and responsibility of Xichang astronauts. On July 27, 2011, the 9th Beidou navigation satellite was about to be launched, and only half an hour before the launch window, there was a strong thunderstorm in the launch site area. Rockets or no rockets? The risk is difficult to estimate; if it does not occur, the danger of fuel unloading is also not optimistic. Under heavy pressure, the command staff brushed their eyes to the central meteorological system. With excellent knowledge, rich experience and accurate calculations, meteorological expert Jiang Xiaohua put forward a bold and accurate prediction: there is a 10-minute thunderstorm gap period before launch, which meets the minimum meteorological conditions for launch and can be launched on time! The command made a decisive decision and successfully launched during the 10-minute thunderstorm interval. The Xichang Satellite Launch Center set a record for the only time in the history of space to launch a satellite during the thunderstorm gap period.

On the evening of June 15, 2020, Beidou-3 was about to end, but before launch, there were sudden product technical problems, in order to ensure 100% success, without hidden dangers, the launch was postponed again. However, the restart of the mission must release nearly 400 tons of conventional propellant from the rocket that has been refueled. Fuel refueling is already extremely dangerous, and the leakage of fuel is a hundred times more dangerous than refueling. In the 50 years since its establishment, the Xichang Satellite Launch Center has never released more than 95% of the conventional propellant of the Long March 3B rocket. At the critical moment, the refueling detachment staged the "most beautiful retrograde", and after 48 hours of continuous struggle, it created the largest fuel leakage record in the history of China's aerospace industry and once again created a Chinese miracle.

Being able to support one miracle after another is inseparable from the xichang astronauts' work style of striving for excellence and being strict and meticulous. Looking at the weekday plan for the launch of a Beidou satellite, the dense time points and corresponding work are dizzying: starting from 6:00 a.m. and continuing until 8:15 a.m. the next day, it is divided into four stages: pre-launch function inspection, launch, post-launch and withdrawal, and the execution time point is refined to minutes, polishing every detail to the extreme. It is under such strict requirements that xichang satellite launch center can achieve foolproof launch missions, and also create a 100% successful space miracle of Beidou launch. (Source of this article: Economic Daily Author: Wang Sheng)