China's aerospace progress helps promote economic, social development

(Photo/Xinhua)

BEIJING, April 17 (Xinhua) -- China's aerospace progress has a close connection with the country's economic and social development and helps improve people's lives, said an official with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) Wednesday.

More than 1 billion people check the weather forecast based on data sent back by China's Fengyun meteorological satellites every day, said Zhao Jian, deputy director of the Department of System Engineering of CNSA, at a press conference about the Space Day of China, which will fall on April 24.

The new generation Fengyun-4 geostationary meteorological satellite, which is able to generate a regional image every minute, plays an important role in weather forecasts and early warning and monitoring of natural disasters, Zhao said.

China's Gaofen-4, which is a high-resolution Earth observation satellite operating on the geosynchronous orbit, is capable of covering the country's whole area in four to 12 minutes, and capturing the rapid trend of disasters such as forest fires, floods and typhoons to provide information for disaster prevention and control.

China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) started to provide global service at the end of 2018. Nearly 100 million BDS terminals have been applied in smartphones, tablet computers, wearable devices and automobiles, according to Zhao.

Statistics show that the development of 80 percent of the nearly 2,000 new materials in China in recent years were driven by space technologies.

The ignition technology of the torch of Beijing Olympic Games, air-cushioned sports shoes, and the sealing technology of automobile engines all came from space technologies, said Zhao.

In addition, technologies gained from developing the "heart" of rockets are helping China, one of the world's major coal consumers, use coal more cleanly and efficiently.

The rapid integration of space information with big data, cloud computing and the internet will greatly improve the information development, Zhao added.