Word: spacecrafts
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...doubt, some catchy consumer items to match the smoke detectors and cordless vacuum cleaners born of nasa. Above all, the piloted space program is good propaganda. "Just as England went to North America and made it British, China needs to stake its claim in space," says Xu Shijie, a spacecraft designer at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics who has worked on altitude controls for the Shenzhou...
...secrecy surrounding Chinese astronauts may be due to the country's less-than-stellar space record so far. In the past the government announced test launches of Shenzhou spacecraft only after they returned, saving itself the embarrassment of having to explain failures. China's satellite-launch program suffered a string of disastrous explosions and aborted launches in the mid-1990s. Although all four unmanned Shenzhou craft have returned from orbit since the first test in 1999, not all were mission-accomplished. The Shenzhou II is widely believed to have suffered damage from a hard landing during a blizzard...
...generating the most buzz, at least partly because the 6.3 billion of us left behind on Earth will be able to share the trip. As with the Pathfinder mission, NASA will fling open a trio of websites that will track the surface explorations as they unfold. Whatever the spacecraft learn, we'll learn along with them--and it could turn out to be plenty. "We have on these rovers so many capabilities that have never been present on another planet," says Steve Squyres, the missions' principal investigator. "I guarantee you, we're going to find new things...
Even before the spacecraft were launched, it was clear their designers had done an extraordinary job. The rovers will reach the Martian surface much the way Pathfinder did, descending with the aid of rocket engines and parachutes and bouncing to a landing swaddled in air bags. After shaking off its inflatable cocoon, each 384-lb. vehicle will unfold itself into its full standing physique, measuring 5.2 ft. long, 7.5 ft. wide and 4.9 ft. tall...
Such plodding travel could yield remarkable science. NASA geologists sifted through 185 possible landing sites for the twin spacecraft, looking for ones that present a minimum of obstacles and a maximum of potential clues to the all important question of whether water has existed on the planet. The rover Spirit is thus headed for a formation known as Gusev crater, about 15º south of the Martian equator. Orbital photography has mapped a sinuous, 559-mile channel that slices into Gusev from the southeast and looks for all the world like a riverbed. "The water should have cut through that crater...