[FPSPACE] shenzhou subsat -- mission ends

[Chen Lan]

The latest news from MCC is: there were six successful maneuvers from Sept 30 to Oct 5. At 18:14 Beijing Time today, commands were sent to the subsat. It entered an 8x4km orbit (if it's an "orbit") around the OM at about 18:44 (just 4 hours ago), which is the first time in Chinese space history that a satellite circling another spacecraft. With completion of "circling evaluation", it will maneuver away from the OM and will enter the "long-term management mode".

The question is, how long the evaluation will take? If it has been done in a few hours, and the "long-term management mode" means something like sleep mode, they can claim "mission completed". Otherwise, if it's as most people expected(circling and photographing at closer distance for many days), it could be journalists' misunderstanding or misinterpreting.

Chen Lan
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: jeoberg at comcast.net 
  To: fpspace at friends-partners.org 
  Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 9:07 PM
  Subject: [FPSPACE] shenzhou subsat -- mission ends




    Is there any indication the subsatellite made any maneuvers after it departed the area of Shenzhou-7 on September 27? Did it try to make a non-cooperative re-rendezvous from a distance, as promised?

    CCTV-1 'News Hookup' Mandarin 1100 GMT 5 Oct 

    1741 // Announcer-read report over video with natural sound: A small monitoring satellite launched during the Shenzhou-7 mission successfully completes its mission.



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