13 June 2017
Unmanned tractors sow seeds pretty fast on an expansive cotton farm belonging to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, in Northwest China, where drones fly at a constant height of 1.8 meters above wheat plants and spray fertilizer on the growing crops. These marvels mark China's latest development in precision agriculture, which relies on autonomous vehicle technology supported by the country's home-grown BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS). Accurate positioning based on BDS is essential for precision agriculture, said Zhang Ruifeng, head of the publicity department at the UniStrong Science and Technology Co, which is based in Beijing and offers satellite navigation and positioning services. The firm successfully developed the "Huinong," or "Smart Agriculture" precision system, China's first self-developed autonomous farming machinery, in 2016, with a maximum error margin of 2.5 centimeters in straight line operations.
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09 June 2017
Global leaders in space exploration discussed during the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2017) their ideas on deep-space exploration. According to Wu Yansheng, general manager of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), China is working on an idea for manned lunar landing. The mission will consist of a manned spaceship, a propulsion vehicle and a lunar lander. The manned spaceship and the lunar lander will be sent into circumlunar orbit separately. Yang Liwei, deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, said that China is in the preliminary stage of its manned lunar program and estimated that Chinese astronauts will be able to walk on the moon around 2030.
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09 June 2017
State-owned high-technology company China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC) is pinning its hopes on private entrepreneurship and innovation to speed up the commercialisation of the country's space technologies. The company supports more than 6,000 private innovative, entrepreneurial programs that have attracted more than 1.7 billion yuan ($ 250 million) in total funds. It has also set up eight innovation incubators across the country, covering a total of 483,000 square meters. Last year, the output of businesses in those incubators surpassed 40 billion yuan.
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08 June 2017
China is working on reusable launch vehicles and has achieved progress in some key areas, a carrier rocket official on 8 June. The processes under development include parachute-landing and propulsion-landing, said Lu Yu, Director of Science and Technology Committee of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) at the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2017). Reusable lift-body launchers will be developed in three stages - rocket-engine partial reusable vehicle, rocket-engine full reusable vehicle and combined cycle-engine reusable vehicle, said Lu.
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