[FPSPACE] Chinese antisatellite missile designers honored

[Allen Thomson]

A kindly cyberspatial entity has passed along the SCMP article. The relevant parts follow.
 

Space Weapons Scientists Honoured
Hong Kong South China Morning Post Online 
10 Jan 2009
By Stephen Chen

The scientists behind the until-now secret military technology that two years ago helped a Chinese missile destroy a satellite in space were publicly honoured yesterday - a sign, some experts said, that China was becoming more open and assertive.

In a grand ceremony in the Great Hall of the People, President Hu Jintao presented the 2008 State Top Scientific and Technological Invention Award to a Dalian University of Technology team.

Their award was for developing a radome, a spherical structure that covers the antenna of a missile's radar. The technology was key to the success of the 2007 missile test, rocket experts said.

"We can't hit any satellites without this technology," a senior researcher at a Beijing technical university told the South China Morning Post. Three other Beijing-based space scientists confirmed to the Post that the technology was behind the anti-satellite missile.

Another team of scientists, from Beihang University , formerly the Beijing Institute of Aeronautics, was also honoured yesterday for developing the sensors and software needed to help the missile identify its target.

That technology "has been applied in four space weapons development programmes... and 20 key defence projects", the Ministry of Education said on its website.

[snip]

The office of Guo Dongming, leader of the Dalian scientific team, said they would not accept overseas media interviews because the technology they developed was related to defence secrets.

Radomes determine the accuracy of a guided missile. Mainland scientists had worked out long ago how to remedy their radome design but lacked the equipment to make one. Radomes are fixed on the head of a missile, so they have to be hard enough to protect the antenna but fragile enough to break upon impact.

Professor Guo and his team solved the problem in 2001.