The "post-90s" astronauts who built the "highway" of space-earth communication

Source: Xinhua Daily Telegraph

In the spacious and bright laboratory, put on headphones and work while listening to your favorite music, which is a favorite living state of "post-90s" astronaut Lu Bin.

Because, "listening" to music is part of his job.

In the vast space 400 kilometers from the earth, the astronauts who are "on business" on the Chinese space station not only often video connect with the earth, but also recently taught a unique space lesson to the world. The three astronauts introduced and demonstrated the work and life scenes of the Chinese space station, demonstrated the phenomenon of cytology experiments, object movement, liquid surface tension and other phenomena in the microgravity environment, and communicated with the ground classroom in real time, as if it were close at hand.

The communication between heaven and earth is unimpeded, and it is inseparable from a communication "highway" built by the Electronics Institute of the Eighth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Group, where Lu Bin is located. This "highway" is composed of space voice processing, image shooting, data integration, high-speed communication and transmission equipment developed by the Eighth Academy Of Electronics. The handsome and capable Lu Bin is a competent designer of voice equipment for manned space engineering at the Institute of Electronics, mainly responsible for voice processing on the "highway".

"Simply put, our job is to voice-code the astronaut's voice, transmit it back to the earth through the high-speed link between heaven and earth, and then restore the astronaut's voice through the decoder on the ground." In the laboratory of the Institute of Electronics, Lu Bin explained while fiddling with the complex equipment as dense as a spider's web.

In the process of debugging the voice equipment, Lu Bin replaced the astronaut's voice with his favorite music. He often played his favorite Park Shu's "Ordinary Road" song over and over again. "That song tells the story of an ordinary person's continuous struggle, which is very similar to mine. If I tune the code, the voice is clear, and the familiar song can be released, I feel extremely happy at that moment, and the joy of this work fascinates me and guides me over one technical barrier after another. Lu Bin said.

Born in 1991 in Daishan County, Zhoushan City, Zhejiang Province, Lu Bin has been a "school bully" since he was a child. He said: "My personality is to hope to do the best in everything, to continue to enrich and enrich myself, not to let my parents have too much burden, and to return them through my own efforts." ”

Admitted to Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2010, Lu Bin followed his father's advice and chose to major in electronic science and technology. In 2012 he became an honorable member of the Communist Party of China. After graduating from undergraduate, he was escorted to graduate school. Graduated in 2017, among many offers, Lu Bin finally chose to work in the Electronics Institute of Shanghai Aerospace Eighth Academy.

"In 2003, when Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut, successfully traveled to space, I was still a fifth-grade primary school student and thought Yang Liwei was too powerful. In 2012, when Shenzhou 9 carried three astronauts to successfully dock with Tiangong-1, I was a sophomore, and when I saw this exciting news, I began to think, what can I do for the country's space industry? When I graduated, I had the opportunity to contribute to my aerospace career. Lu Bin said.

Just a few days after arriving at the Electronics Institute, Lu Bin received a task book for the development of voice products, which was his first contact with tall aerospace products, confused, and it was good to arrange an experienced master for aerospace newcomers like him in the institute. Lu Bin's master's name is Huang Jianqing, and he is the head of the voice team of the Electronics Institute. Master Huang followed Lu Bin's good examples, from leading him into the aerospace gate to giving him the opportunity to grow and exercise, guiding him step by step to make continuous progress.

Once, the inexperienced Lu Bin was negligent and drew a wrong schematic. Through patient inspection, Master Huang found the error in time and avoided greater losses in the future. For this negligence of his own, Lu Bin was very remorseful, but Master Huang did not blame, but comforted and encouraged. The master's tolerance and expectations make the strong Lu Bin constantly motivate himself in his heart: we must do the best!

In the complex and harsh space, it is necessary to ensure the high reliability of aerospace products in various environments. In a certain product vibration test, the voice was suddenly interrupted, Lu Bin's heart suddenly seemed to sink to the bottom of the sea, he was in a hurry, day and night in the test center constantly simulated the fault phenomenon, troubleshooting the cause of the fault, and finally successfully located. Another time, due to the replacement of the chip of the product, the stand-alone machine was abnormally powered on at high temperatures. In order to solve the problem, he repeatedly carried out high and low temperature tests under various working conditions and finally found the cause of the failure.

"Zeroing is a painful experience that our astronauts often have. After the problem, you need to keep doing experiments, constantly analyzing and researching, to completely find out the cause of the failure, and you need to give an example, and next time you can't have such a problem. Lu Bin said.

In order to test aerospace products, Lu Bin often needs to go to Beijing and Tianjin to participate in the joint test of products, and to participate in the docking of heaven and earth at measurement and control stations across the country. In Kashgar, Xinjiang, the westernmost monitoring and control station in China, due to the time difference, at 7 o'clock in the morning, the sky in Kashgar was not yet light, he set off to work at the measurement and control station, where he assisted the overall unit to communicate with the beijing center simulated heaven and earth. The monitoring and control station is surrounded by a desert, and every time in the evening, the howling wind will roll up a lot of sand, the sky is muddy, and he still needs to stick to the joint test post until 9 pm.

On April 29, 2021, the Core Module of the Chinese Space Station was successfully launched. Immediately afterward, Tianzhou No. 2, Shenzhou No. 12, Tianzhou No. 3, and Shenzhou NO. 13 took off one after another. At this time, Lu Bin was already an aerospace worker who had been working for 4 years. Under the leadership of the master and the forging and cultivation of the Electronics Institute of the Eighth Academy of Aerospace, he has become the chief designer of the manned model from a newcomer to the space station and the voice processor of the manned spacecraft.

He is responsible for the space station voice processor, which realizes the audio call between the space station cabin, the cabin, the heaven and the earth, the out of the cabin and the Shenzhou spacecraft, and the real-time call between the heaven and the earth is less than 1 second.

The equipment integrates low-code rate high-quality voice compression codec, two-way high-fidelity music coding technology, under the premise of ensuring that the voice is not distorted, the audio compression code rate is increased by 4 times compared with Tiangong-1, and the compression method is expanded from 1 to 5 kinds of Shenzhou 11; the capacity realizes 30 channels of voice data real-time processing, which is 2 times that of Shenzhou 11.

The space station's voice processor has also achieved three firsts: for the first time, the various call terminals have been called to each other through digital mixing; for the first time, the various call terminals inside the spacecraft have been maintained and managed in real time; and for the first time, various audio parameters have been dynamically adjusted by means of parameter annotation.

In terms of experience, the space station's voice processor can not only allow astronauts to make calls at home on the space station like at home, but also make calls inside and outside the "station", and can "connect" with the Shenzhou spacecraft on the way, and even establish a "group chat". When chatting in groups, you can adjust the volume individually for the small partners at each end, which is more accurate and practical to use. Astronauts can access chat at any corner of the space station, accurately set single or multiple call objects, and chat while listening to music.

"We designed the voice processor, really in the cabin, outside the cabin and on the ground, who you want to talk to, talk to whomever you want, group chat, private chat, casual chat!" Lu Bin said confidently.

In 2021, the young Lu Bin also brought an apprentice. Together with his team members, he helped each other to overcome difficult problems, and realized the automated testing of a number of test items on the test equipment of the voice processor, which greatly saved the test time. The next goal is that they hope to implement the intelligent voice device of the space station.

"The road is long and the road is long, and I will seek it up and down." This is Lu Bin's motto. The sunny "post-90s" astronaut said: "In the new year, my biggest wish is to go to the launch site once and see for myself the launch of the follow-up module of the Chinese space station." Bless everyone who cares about me and everyone I care about, happy and healthy every day; I wish the motherland's aerospace industry to a higher level, and all launch missions are successfully completed! (Reporters Zhang Jiansong and Ding Ting)