China Aerospace Day Special Plan： Astronauts Hold up the Chinese Dream

2016 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of China’s space industry. On April 24th, 2016, with the official approval of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, this day was established as the first "China Aerospace Day".

On April 24th, 1970, China’s first artificial earth satellite "Dongfanghong-1" was successfully launched, which played a magnificent movement of Chinese’s exploration of the universe. With a flick of a finger, earth-shattering changes have taken place in China Aerospace: from "two bombs and one satellite" to the stunning appearance of the space Excalibur in the "September 3" military parade, from the astronauts’ successful round-trip to space to the image of the five-star red flag sent back by the "Chang ‘e" lunar exploration, from the rise of fire dragons to the sky, to the space technology winning the national special prize for scientific progress again and again … All these have witnessed China’s space.

Over the past 60 years, China’s space industry has grown from scratch, from small to large, from weak to strong, and has become a high-tech industry with strategic significance. It has formed an effective space system engineering management system and mechanism, established a complete supporting scientific research and production innovation system, created a high-quality and skilled talent team, and accumulated and inherited a profound space spirit and culture. China Aerospace has made brilliant achievements marked by "two bombs and one satellite", manned space flight and lunar exploration project, and achieved rapid development in three major fields: space technology, space application and space science.

In September 1992, the central government decided to implement the manned spaceflight project and determined the "three-step" development strategy of China’s manned spaceflight: the first step is to launch a manned spacecraft, build a preliminary supporting experimental manned spacecraft project and carry out space application experiments; The second step is to break through the technology of astronauts’ extravehicular activities and rendezvous and docking of spacecraft, launch a space laboratory, and solve the problem of short-term manned space application with a certain scale; The third step is to build a space station to solve the problem of space application with large-scale long-term care. In the early morning of November 20th, 1999, the first unmanned experimental spacecraft "Shenzhou-1" launched in China’s manned space program was successfully launched from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Base and returned to the ground after 21 hours’ flight. Since then, the successful missions of Shenzhou 5 and Shenzhou VI have marked the realization of the first step of the project. The successful mission of Shenzhou VII indicates that China has mastered the key technology of astronauts’ extravehicular activities. The successful rendezvous and docking mission between Tiangong-1 and Shenzhou-8 and Shenzhou-9 indicates that China has broken through and mastered the automatic and manual control rendezvous and docking technology. The successful manned mission of Shenzhou-10 marks the perfect conclusion of the second step and the first phase of China’s manned spaceflight project.

Manned spaceflight project. China has successfully developed and launched 10 shenzhou spaceship and 1 target aircraft, realized the Chinese dream of flying for thousands of years, and continuously broke through many key technologies such as extravehicular activities, rendezvous and docking, becoming the third country in the world to independently master manned space technology. Lunar exploration project. According to the implementation of the trilogy of "winding, falling and returning", China has successfully completed the development and launch of three lunar probes, becoming the fifth country in the world to launch lunar probes, creating the farthest record of deep space exploration in China. Mars exploration project. At present, the development task of Mars exploration project has been carried out, and it is planned to enter the Martian atmosphere, release the probe to patrol Mars, and further explore deep space to more distant extraterrestrial objects. Satellite navigation system. China’s Beidou satellite navigation system is the third mature satellite navigation system after American and Russian satellite navigation systems, which is widely used in intelligent transportation, disaster reduction, emergency response and control, national security, accurate timing and other fields.

General Secretary of the Supreme Leader once pointed out that the space dream is an important part of the dream of a strong country. With the rapid development of China’s space industry, Chinese will make greater and further strides in exploring space. In this development process, we have made brilliant achievements in winning victories in successive battles, which has made China’s space technology development step into the international advanced ranks. We have cultivated a team of high-quality talents who are particularly hard-working, particularly capable of fighting, tackling key problems and being particularly dedicated, and cultivated a great manned space spirit. The vast number of astronauts have demonstrated firm ideals and beliefs, high patriotic enthusiasm, strong responsibility and good spirit. You are worthy of being a heroic team with excellent ideas, skills and style.

Space exploration is endless, and dreams never stop.