How to ensure that China's space station has been running in orbit for more than 10 years?

On the afternoon of December 17, the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting with Chinese and foreign journalists, and representatives of party members in the field of manned spaceflight met and exchanged views with Chinese and foreign journalists around "flying in the sky and writing loyalty to dreams".

Born in 1970, Sun Jun joined the Communist Party of China in 1991, is a senior engineer in the first room of the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center, and is the deputy chief designer of the space station engineering measurement and control communication system and the leader of the flight control team. In the past 26 years of dedication to the aerospace industry, along with the growth and development of China's manned space project, he has participated in various flight missions from Shenzhou-1 to the construction stage of the space station, from scientific research to program design, from software research and development to command and decision-making, and deeply mastered various technologies in the field of measurement and control of manned space engineering.

Sun Jun said that the space station will be in orbit for more than 10 years, which is indeed facing many new challenges and new difficulties for our center. There are three main aspects:

First, the task density is high. At the same time, in the future, four to five round-trip space-to-earth transport missions will be carried out every year, that is, to launch manned spacecraft for group rotation, and to launch cargo spacecraft for material replenishment, so some major tasks, including launching, rendezvous and docking, evacuation and return, and flying around, are very intensive. This poses a very big challenge to the organization of our mission.

Second, the running time is long. The space station has been carrying manned flights for a long time, and large-scale manned space science experiments should be carried out. At the same time, the work is also very heavy, the ground needs to carry out 24-hour uninterrupted monitoring and control, especially to monitor some major conditions, to monitor the safety of the entire flight, to ensure the smooth operation of the space station, so we do have to be on duty 24 hours. At the same time, the long-term operation of the system puts forward higher requirements for the safety and reliability of the system, just like the refrigerator at home, which takes a long time and definitely needs maintenance, and our flight system is the same. Therefore, this also puts forward higher requirements for our emergency response capabilities.

Third, there have been many scientific experiments. So many space science experiments, reaching tens of tons, hundreds of tons of loads, for us, the real implementation of the complexity is even stronger. In addition to scientific experiments, we also need to carry out complex and more specialized work such as the replenishment of space materials, the outgoing activities of astronauts, the maintenance and repair of on-orbit, and the remote operation of mechanical arms. Therefore, this also puts forward high requirements for the cooperation and coordination between our entire system and professional support capabilities.

In the face of these challenges, we planned in advance and made some advance preparations, mainly in the following aspects:

The first is to optimize the organizational model of the task. In view of the long-term operation in orbit and the characteristics of periodic visits of cargo spacecraft and manned spacecraft, we have designed a new flight control organization model that combines centralized and distributed, and built an efficient operation control system by using information and networked means, linking our Chinese Academy of Sciences, including spacecraft centers, which can effectively improve the efficiency of cooperation between systems and the level of professional support. We also have multiple model teams working in parallel within our center to ensure the orderly execution of complex missions.

Second, a large number of technological innovations have been carried out. We have built a flight control platform system with high autonomy, high reliability and easy expansion. In view of the monitoring requirements of long-term duty, automatic monitoring and fault diagnosis technology are adopted to improve the level of intelligence and achieve efficient monitoring capabilities.

The third is to establish a lot of standardized processes. For such serialized and spectral tasks as cargo spacecraft and manned spacecraft, we solidify the flight preparation process and standardize it, and for some emergency needs, we also propose an emergency response process, which can effectively improve emergency response capabilities.

Source Beijing Daily Client | Reporter Li Ruyi Liu Suya

Edited by Zeng Jiajia

Process Editor Liu Weili