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Young Helmsmen Steer Shenzhou At Mission Control
Beijing - Jan 29, 2002 Signs of launch preparations for Shenzhou-3 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) continue to emerge with mission controllers at the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center (BACCC) said to be working around the clock to get ready to track the unmanned test flight. China Youth Daily reported Jan. 20 that the controllers, most of them young technicians, gave up their holidays to work at the Beijing Aerospace City and where they routinely put in 15 hour days while practically "living" in the control center. Since the last Shenzhou mission, these BACCC controllers have made improvements and honed their skills in key areas such as transparent flight control, high-precision orbit determination, automated flight plan generation, reentry control, high-speed data processing, and visualization of monitoring displays. Completed in March 1996, BACCC is the "center with the task of command dispatching, flight controlling, analytical planning, and data processing for China's manned space program, in addition, "BACCC can also offer foreign tracking services," said Sui Qisheng, Director of BACCC, in an interview with Science and Technology Daily on Nov. 7, 2001. "With command communications information processing, monitoring display and flight controlling that are very comprehensive, respond rapidly and calculate precisely, the modernized control system is the 'nerve center' to command and control a spacecraft in flight," explained Sui. As the prime control center of the Shenzhou missions, BACCC had successfully handled the first two unmanned test flights in Nov. 1999 and Jan. 2001. In front of many rows of monitors and technician consoles are four large projection screens which display the current status of a mission both numerically and graphically including supporting animations. At the computer center technicians can process data from China's domestic and international tracking station and its fleet of three tracking ships enabling detailed monitoring of flight conditions. The several hundred computers and communications processors in the computer center are connected in a high-speed, distributed-processing data network to receive, process and transmit mission data. Through this connection the control center links with the orbiting spacecraft via China's tracking stations and ships. Be it a missile test in the northwest desert, a satellite launch from Xichang in the southwestern Sichuan, a rocket splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, or a spacecraft traveling in space BACCC can provide support said Sui.
Young Blood At The Helm For example all the directors and deputy directors of technical departments completed their education after 1984, and the heads of specialist groups came out of schools after 1995. These young cadres have doctorate and master degrees or are undergraduates, and they are the mainstay of the control center. The young leaders, specialists and technicians are dedicated to their work despite the non-competitive salaries offered when compared to the private sectors.
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