Director of China’s Space Science Center: “People Are Eager to See Some Breakthroughs…”

Dr. Wu Ji, director-general of the National Space Science Center in Beijing, has led the effort to get China to invest in making ground-breaking contributions to space science. As reported in a comprehensive article by Andrew Jones, in the Finland-based gbtimes Tuesday, Wu explains that in China, “in GDP we are second in the world. [but] that’s only money. So we have to make some contribution to human beings and our knowledge.” He notes that there is strong public backing for space science missions, beyond the concerns about budgets. He said, “People are eager to see some breakthroughs, to say that China has [made] a fundamental contribution to fundamental science.”

Wu, himself, Jones reports, was in Europe’s Space Technology and Research Center in 1986, when Halley’s Comet visited our night sky. “That was very, very inspiring for a young engineer,” says Wu. He and his colleagues have created the plans for China’s space science missions for the current 12th Five Year Plan, and for the next plan, from 2016-2020. The first space science mission launched under the multi-year plan was the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) in December. Three more should be launched this year, including an X-ray telescope. Eight experiments in fluid physics will also be conducted in the Tiangong-2 module, to be launched this year. Longer-term, more complex and challenging missions are also being planned, out to 2030. They encompass nearly every field of astrophysics, cosmology, and include biological science.

On the prospects for international cooperation that are being offered by China, Wu says that a selection of a new round of priority missions has taken place, one of which is a joint solar wind explorer mission with the European Space Agency. (This is a joint space science project with young scientists that China and ESA have under way, to develop a joint satellite). The next round of space science missions will be launched around 2020, Wu said.

In November, Wu told the press, at a briefing on the up-coming science missions: “China should not only follow others in space exploration; it should set some challenging goals that have never been done by others, such as sending the Chang’e-4 lunar probe to land on the far side of the Moon.” And that is precisely what China is doing.