Spacecraft controllers aim for the heights

Experts at a center in Beijing oversee operations of crews and missions, ensuring that nation's program continues to build upon recent successes. Zhao Lei reports.

Like many office workers, Hu Guolin and his colleagues deal with figures, charts and graphics on their computer screens.

However, the information in front of Hu's team comes from Earth's orbit or even planets hundreds of millions of kilometers away.

From the first day of its existence, people working at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center — like Hu, some of the smartest minds in China — have been tasked with applying their talent and expertise to realize the nation's ambitions in orbit, ranging from building a permanent space station to operating rovers on extraterrestrial bodies.

Established in 1996 to serve the nation's manned space program, the center has played an indispensable role in all crewed spaceflights. It is also the country's top body responsible for controlling and tracking deep-space missions.

During the past two years, mission controllers at the center, which is located inside the strictly guarded Beijing Aerospace City compound in a northwestern suburb of the capital, have often appeared on television monitoring spacecraft operations, calculating trajectories, uploading commands and conversing with astronauts.

The controllers, in aquamarine uniforms with the "China Space" logo on the back, were attentive, energetic and sharp-eyed on TV.

Behind that glamorous appearance, though, the work of these men and women is demanding, challenging and painstaking.

A nonstop flow of information related to trajectories and positions pours into the windowless control halls 24 hours a day from orbiting spacecraft and telemetry stations across the country, as well as tracking ships on the oceans.

The controllers monitor the data with rapt attention, make quick decisions on the measures to take in the event of alarms about in-orbit malfunctions or emergencies, and produce specific plans for the next step of each mission.

"Our controllers on the Tiangong space station program work 12-hour shifts that start at 8 am or 8 pm. Their job requires them to be utterly focused on information that changes in a matter of minutes or even seconds. Actually, they spend much longer than 12 hours here every day because they need to attend briefings before and after their shifts, and also often need to participate in workshops on mission details," Hu, head of the controllers in charge of long-term spacecraft operations, said during a recent media tour of the center.

The Tiangong space station was completed at the end of last year, after 12 launch missions.

As one of the largest space-based assets ever deployed in Earth's orbit, the station currently consists of: the Tianhe core module; the Wentian and Mengtian lab modules; the Shenzhou XV crew spacecraft; and the Tianzhou 5 cargo ship.

So far, four groups of astronauts have lived and worked inside the facility. The current crew — the three members of the Shenzhou XV mission — arrived in November. The astronauts are scheduled to live on the station until May, when the crew of Shenzhou XVI will take over.