Around the Chinese New Year, several reports about China’s space technology sparked attention.
In late January 2022, a U.S. media outlet revealed that China’s SJ-21 satellite “is acting as a space tug” to drag a failed BeiDou navigation satellite out of a crowded geosynchronous orbit and into a “graveyard orbit,” according to an analysis by a commercial space inspection company.
According to the report, China’s SJ-21 satellite circled and approached a failed Beidou-2 navigation satellite on Jan. 22, and after performing a “proximity maneuver,” it performed a “big maneuver” to drag the failed satellite out of geosynchronous orbit. After completing the above operation, SJ-21 separated from the BeiDou satellite and returned to its near-Earth orbit.
The SJ-21 satellite, also known as the Shijian-21 satellite, is the latest member of the “Shijian” (Practice) series of scientific test satellites, which was launched on Oct. 24, 2021, according to official Chinese information.
According to relevant public information, the SJ-21 satellite is mainly used for experimental verification of space debris mitigation technology, and has also been called a “space scavenger” by some reports, with a series of technologies related to capturing space targets.
Several test spacecraft launched by the world’s leading spacefaring nations this century have involved space debris mitigation-related technologies – the capture of space targets or the docking of non-cooperative objects – and both China and the United States have made considerable progress in this area.
In February 2020, the U.S. MEV satellite successfully docked with a decommissioned communications satellite, diverting the latter’s orbit, and two years later, in early 2022, China’s Shijian satellite did the same.
Compared to the docking of the MEV and the controllable satellite, the Chinese SJ-21 satellite transferred the deactivated satellite, that is, the “non-cooperative object” docking, which is widely considered to be more difficult than the United States.
In addition to being a “space scavenger,” China’s other space technology advantage is also causing “anxiety” in Washington.
The U.S. Defense Department reportedly held an online meeting with more than 12 defense contractors on Feb. 3, supported by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks and Deputy Secretary for Research and Engineering Xu Ruobing, and joined by the U.S. Secretary of Defense. The meeting called on contractors to accelerate the development of hypersonic weapons, not to fear failure, and to seek to gain an advantage in the hypersonic competition with China.
According to reports, the U.S. military-industrial giants at the meeting detailed a series of existing problems, including supply chain constraints, acquisition barriers, budget instability and access to testing facilities, claiming that without proper testing facilities, the U.S. Department of Defense would have difficulty truly adopting a “test often, fail fast and learn” approach to development.
Such meetings between the U.S. Secretary of Defense and industry executives are rare and underscore the Pentagon’s urgent need to develop hypersonic weapons, while its so-called “fail fast” approach to development also shows that the U.S. still does not seem to have found the right path in this area of technology and can only seek breakthroughs through rapid trial and error.
The U.S. hypersonic research has suffered repeated setbacks in recent years, with the U.S. Air Force’s AGM183A hypersonic missile having failed three consecutive tests and the X-51A hypersonic vehicle test having been abandoned halfway.
China, on the other hand, has made great strides in hypersonic flight testing since 2014, with notable achievements in several specific areas of hypersonic technology such as near-space boosted glide vehicles, near-space aspirated hypersonic cruise vehicles, small transatmospheric space maneuvering vehicles, and ballistic missiles.