Chinese Shenzhou-7 Spaceship Imaged by Microsatellite

Shenzhou-7 imaged by the BX-1 small monitoring satellite six minutes after it was released from the main ship (Xinhua Photo)

On September 27th (Saturday), two hours after Zhai Zhigang completed China’s first ever space walk, the Shenzhou-7 spaceship launched a mini-monitoring satellite to orbit its mothership. Although it might have been a better idea to launch BX-1 before Zhai started his EVA (thereby stemming some of the accusations that China had faked the whole event), the images BX-1 returned were pretty impressive. According to state-run news sources, the BX-1 has taken over 1,000 images, the first one was taken only six seconds after being released…

The view of Shenzhou-7 over Earth, three minutes after the monitoring satellite was released on September 27th, 2008 (Xinhua Photo)

This interesting addendum to the Chinese spacewalk on September 27th. The Shenzhou-7 spacecraft was carrying a miniaturized satellite, only 40 kg in mass, to orbit the main spaceship for a period of three months (Wikipedia source, translated text). The bulk of the spaceship was left to orbit the Earth after the three taikonauts took the re-entry vehicle and descended to terra firma. The 40 cm-long sided cube carries two 150 megapixel stereo cameras (although the quality of the images released don’t really showcase this high resolution) and a liquid ammonia engine.

According to the Chinese-language mission plans, the microsatellite BX-1 carried out a highly elliptical orbit of Shenzhou-7, taking it a distance of 100-200 km away. After the crew return module dropped back to Earth, BX-1 had to “catch-up” with the spaceship to continue its monitoring mission. As of October 5th, BX-1 was in a stable elliptical orbit of 4 km (periapsis) by 8 km (apoapsis) around the empty Shenzhou.

The view of Shenzhou-7, 6 seconds after BX-1 was released (Xinhua Photo)

Since September 30th, mission control has been modifying BX-1′s orbit six times to draw it closer to Shenzhou-7. On Wednesday, they succeeded, bringing the tiny satellite within a few km of its mothership. So far, officials say that over a thousand images have been taken by BX-1 from all angles and that all the pictures were “clear and complete.”

While all this sounds very cool (after all, this is the first time I’ve ever heard about the use of a tiny monitoring satellite after a manned mission), I would love to see some higher resolution imagery from BX-1. I would also like to see some more documentation on the technology behind this interesting cube. Unfortunately, I doubt the Chinese space agency will be as forthcoming with that information…

Source: Xinhuanet
Track Shenzhou-7 and BX-1 using real-time satellite tracking…