Fourth Unmanned Spacecraft Carries out Experiments

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, January 03, 2003

Fourth Unmanned Spacecraft Carries out Experiments

China's fourth unmanned spacecraft, the Shenzhou IV, is to carry out a series of major space experiments in the fields of physics, biology and biomedicine, a leading Chinese scientist said Thursday.

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China's fourth unmanned spacecraft, the Shenzhou IV, is to carry out a series of major space experiments in the fields of physics, biology and biomedicine, a leading Chinese scientist said Thursday.

If successful, the experiments will mark a breakthrough in the country's aerospace studies, said Gu Yidong, chief designer of China's space application system.

In particular, the designed experiments will cover materials processing, bio-medicine production and bioprocessing.

"The space environment of slight to zero gravity is good to complete some operations that are almost impossible on Earth,'' Gu was quoted as saying by Xinhua Thursday.

In addition, the Shenzhou IV will also use microwaves for a remote-sensing survey of the Earth and to monitor the space environment.

Sources with the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Centre and on China's four survey ships confirmed Thursday that the spacecraft has been operating well, with all experiments carried out to plan so far.

The four survey ships are in the western Pacific Ocean, southern Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean.

The Shenzhou IV blasted into space at 12:40 am on Monday morning on a powerful Long March 2F rocket. It detached itself from the launch vehicle and entered its preset orbit at around 12:50 am.

The successful launch and operation of the Shenzhou IV are believed to have laid a solid foundation for manned flight, which might happen in the second half of this year, as Shanghai Aerospace Bureau director Yuan Jie said on Wednesday.

China's first group of peony seeds bred in outer space last month sprouted in Heze in East China's Shandong Province. This has made experts more confident of a satisfactory result in this round of space experiments.

The 200 peony seeds travelled into space on the Shenzhou III spacecraft from March 25 to April 1 last year for six full days and 18 hours.

It was the first time China had experimented on peony seeds in zero gravity.

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