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Shenzhou-3 Design Changes Caused Lengthy Mission Delay
Beijing - Mar 13, 2002 A senior Chinese space official revealed Monday that problems with internal systems of the Shenzhou-3 (SZ-3) spacecraft was the major cause for the lengthy delay in launching the third test flight of China's future manned spacecraft a Beijing newspaper reported. In an interview with the newspaper Beijing Youth Daily Zhuang Fenggan, Chairman of Science and Technology Committee of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and a consultant on advanced technology at China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), said that the original plan was to launch SZ-3 last year. Mission designers had hoped to improve the interior installation of the spacecraft on this mission. But problems appeared after the changes were implemented. This forced the design team to revert back to the previous interior set-up and delayed the mission to this year. Zhuang, however, did not provide any details of the changes and the problems encountered. The 77-year-old aerodynamics specialist said, "I personally believe that it is best not to change the spacecraft installation. Even the subsequent SZ-4 and SZ-5 spacecraft should not make changes. "If every mission has some changes, conditions of the space vehicle of each launch are definitely not identical. If such changes are kept up, conditions [of the spacecraft] would be different by the time the manned mission is launched. We simply cannot guarantee the reliability of the conditions at that time." Zhuang further explained that demand on the reliability of the manned spacecraft was very high and such a reliability would not come from calculations but from verification through full testings. He added, "Speaking as a technician, when the launch will take place is not important. It is important to guarantee the safe launch and return of the yuhangyuans ("astronauts"). "After the successful flight of SZ-1, some people had said that the follow-up mission should be manned to ride on the momentum. We clearly cannot do that." Zhuang confirmed that before the rollout of the Changzheng-2F (Long March-2F) launcher with Shenzhou-3 (Shenzhou means "Magic Vessel" or "Divine Vessel") on board, technicians had completed all ground tests, including electrical inspection and simulation work. The entire mission procedure had been determined and every effort had been made to ensure perfection in each mission segment.
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