2021 and 2022 have been particularly busy for China's aerospace industry.
If you look through the "Blue Book of China's Aerospace Science and Technology Activities", you will find that in the whole year of 2021, 146 rockets were launched into space around the world.
During the whole year, the total number of spacecraft launched reached 1,846, with a total mass of about 778 tons.
These numbers are not very sensitive, but in a word, you can know what these numbers mean, and no one after you knows it, but at least it is unprecedented.
So 2021 can be said to be the busiest year in the aerospace sector.
Among these missions, China has carried out 55 space launches, accounting for the first place in this year's launch missions, and the number of spacecraft launched has also reached 115, with a total mass of nearly 200 tons.
They were followed by the United States, which launched fifty-one missions during the year, but the total mass was many, more than four hundred tons.
After all, it is an old space power, which is understandable.
But comparatively speaking, China has gained the most, and there are many key technological breakthroughs.
For example, the 500-ton liquid oxygen kerosene rocket engine was successfully tested, which is currently the world's largest thrust double-tube thrust chamber engine, and its comprehensive indicators have reached the world's advanced level.
Speaking of deep space exploration, such as landing on the moon, landing on Mars, and even building bases in these two places, high-thrust rockets are a must.
This is much more reliable than a high-thrust rocket with dozens of small engines bundled together.
In addition, the prototype of the 220-ton refueling cycle hydrogen-oxygen engine has been successfully developed, and so on.
Therefore, China's harvest this year can be said to be full of returns.
In addition, there are breakthroughs in manned spaceflight, the moon, satellites, various space tests, and so on.
Moreover, the space station has also begun to be in full swing, and astronauts have entered it in batches to conduct various tests.
Then there is Tianwen-1, whose exploration missions to Mars have met the expected requirements.
In the face of good news in 2021, the launch mission will remain high in 2022.
The most important content is to complete the assembly and construction of the space station.
Compared with China's busyness in the aerospace field, other countries are not far behind.
For example, the Artemis program, which the United States will start promoting in 2022, will also make its first flight, using the unmanned super rocket Orion spacecraft to enter orbit around the moon.
Japan is also following suit, launching a small lunar exploration lander to study the use of facial recognition technology to understand the moon's volcanoes, and the actual and intended location of the landing must be precisely controlled within a range of 100 meters.
In the face of the development of the aerospace field in full swing, the UAE has also aroused the dream of the moon.
Therefore, China wants to cooperate further and put their research and development of Rashid 2 on Chang'e-7 to see the moon together.
Originally, this is a very good thing, and there are no other problems with your will.
As a result, the United States could not hold on, so it took action to cut off the dream of the United Arab Emirates and China to cooperate and land on the moon.
A copy of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations from 1976 was placed in front of the UAE.
There will be a showdown directly, if you want to cooperate with China, then good, the United States will restrict the export of technology, and do not provide American technology and American parts to the UAE.
You must know that a lot of equipment in the UAE is purchased from the United States, and maintenance and replacement parts are inseparable from the United States.
It's embarrassing!
When the UAE hesitated, the United States threw out another reason, they were very worried that China would disassemble the Rashid 2 lunar rover in the process of pushing it to the moon, so as to steal the high technology of the United States.
This reason can be said to be directly cut off, the UAE's dream of landing on the moon with the help of China's lunar landing technology.
What many people don't know is that at this point in time, in fact, China and the UAE have already signed various documents in the discussion of this matter, and it is okay to say that all the processes have been completed.
When it came to a successful conclusion, the United States came out to stir up the situation.
In the face of the problems raised by the United States, it is clear that this time the United States has succeeded in disrupting the situation.
Then this matter stumbled, and by the end of 2023, there was a new change.
Universities from the United Arab Emirates came, and they wanted to participate in the lunar research station promoted by China and Russia, and soon the two sides reached a memorandum and signed it.
Clear-eyed people can see that this is actually a change of clothes and a new one, as for the specific people involved, it is still those people.
拦不住,根本拦不住。
The UAE's space dream
When it comes to the UAE, many people get the impression that the country is rich.
In fact, this country also attaches great importance to science and technology, and does not hesitate to invest a lot of money.
For example, on July 17, 2022, they also set up a national space fund, for which they invested $817 million.
An important project of this fund is the construction of a constellation of synthetic aperture radar satellites.
The name sounds long, what does it mean?
A satellite constellation is not a constellation, but a collection of satellites that work properly after being launched into orbit.
This collection of satellites is called a flock of birds by the UAE, and the UAE hopes to build a flock of birds within six years, and the first satellite will be launched into space within three years.
Of course, technology is a problem, and they will bid for the research and development of satellite components, as well as launch, operation, etc., and cooperate with other countries or scientific research units in related fields in their own countries.
There is also an earlier exploration of Mars, which was also carried out in the UAE.
For example, on February 9, 2021, the UAE's Hope Mars rover successfully entered the orbit of Mars.
This move makes the UAE the first country in West Asia and the fifth country in the world to send a probe into orbit around Mars.
The rover is also small, weighing 1,350 kilograms, nearly three meters high and nearly two meters wide, carrying instruments to detect the composition of the Martian atmosphere and changes in temperature.
The UAE's explorer launch was launched into space by a rocket launched by Japan's Tanegashima Space Center.
The plan to explore Mars was first proposed by the UAE at a cabinet meeting in 2013.
At that time, the biggest dilemma faced by the UAE was the shortage of technical researchers, and of course, there were very few researchers in this area.
Eventually, the burden fell to a man named Sharaf, who is one of the scientists in the UAE who has studied the satellites.
For this plan, Alamaktoum, then president of the UAE and deputy prime minister, called Sharaf to ask if it was possible to send their probe into orbit around Mars by 2021.
This is a significant event, as it is the first deep space exploration mission undertaken by the UAE.
In 2014, the UAE's space agency was officially established, and the backbone of the space agency is a group of young people with an average age of 27.
The most common questions these young people face are:
"You're a bunch of kids. How are you going to get to Mars?"
It's a joke that their ignorant people are innocent.
You know, the UAE Space Agency at that time was not only composed of a bunch of people who were not very old, they had nothing on hand, no space agencies, no satellites to develop, and even no majors dedicated to teaching planetary science.
To use an inappropriate phrase as an analogy, it is a babbling child who has to debate with a great Confucian who fights with his tongue.
But in any case, from the beginning, it was much better than starting from scratch, at least they set up a space agency.
So in the beginning, they had to hire foreign experts to train them.
Since they were going to Mars, of course, they had to find countries that had been to Mars to cooperate, so they found the only United States in the world with a full understanding of Mars at that time to cooperate, and also hired experienced engineers from the United States to work with them.
There was even training on how to launch a probe to Mars.
The whole process went step by step.
Many people see the UAE's Mars rover for the first time and think that this rover was developed by other countries.
In fact, when they were promoting the project at that time, they also encountered the problem of whether to develop it themselves or buy it directly.
To this question, Sharaf's superiors gave a clear answer, not to buy, but to build.
Of course, it is obviously inappropriate to build without anything, so they chose to cooperate and cooperate with the United States to develop the Hope Mars rover.
Eventually, they succeeded, and the Hope rover was scheduled to stay in orbit for a Martian year.
At that time, you'll get about 240 gigabytes of data.
And this mission, from the beginning to the success, spent 200 million dollars.
In the face of such a project, 200 million US dollars can still succeed, in fact, it is not too high.
Of course, the success of Hope this time was developed together with the United States, and it can be regarded as an American-controlled probe.
But the significance is significant, and it has given the UAE a bolder idea for star exploration, as technology and experience have been enhanced.
They are also considered to be rising stars in deep space exploration, which led to the launch of the later Rashid lunar probe.
The Rashid probe was announced by the UAE on September 19, 2020, two months after the launch of Hope, as their next space target.
The Moonwalk will be built by a team of UAE engineers with the goal of entering unexplored areas of the lunar surface.
In October 2021, the UAE Space Agency launched the UAE Planetary Mission, one of which explores asteroids other than Mars, as well as sending probes to the Sun to explore passing planets.
The project involved not only private companies in the UAE, but also universities in the country.
For the exploration of asteroids, the farthest distance can be three astronomical units from the Sun and 570 million kilometers from the Earth.
So the UAE's approach to deep space exploration is a series of actions that are targeted.