Looking at the space town from a distance

　　Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is the cradle of China's spaceflight and China's biggest spaceflight launch base. For the past four decades, the Center has been playing an extremely important role in China's space program. It has accomplished many first times in the Chinese space history. It successfully sent China's first man-made satellite, the first retrievable satellite equipped with a laboratory, and the first Shenzhou spacecraft.

　　Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is located near the Ruo River in the Badanjilin Desert in Northwest China. Newly constructed manned space flights launching grounds are in the Center. The area used to be a vast desert. From the 1950s until now, a modern Chinese space town has emerged as rockets sent more and more satellites and spaceships into space.

Technicians are examining launch devices carefully.

　　History offered the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center great opportunities of development. Under the encouragement of the then Premier Zhou Enlai, Qian Xuesen, a famous Chinese rocket expert, submitted to the Central Commission of the CPC suggestions of developing space flights and modern rockets. In April 1956, the Central Commission listened to the reports by Qian Xuesen of plans and ideas of developing Chinese rocket technologies. One month later, the Central Commission of the CPC approved the plans and decided to build a rocket launch center in the Jiuquan area. Then, a new, crucial stage started in the historty of China's modern rocket technology.

Space vehicle remote control facilities

　　After decades of construction, the space town is now covered in luxuriant green trees and has many high buildings. In order to provide a good environment for talented people to work in this harsh and remote area, the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center constructed a large library to meet the needs of experts to learn and follow the latest progress in their own fields. A sports complex, swimming pools and TV stations were set up to enrich the spare time of the scientists. This town-like place boasts of flowers, trees and the beauties of four seasons, which makes their life here more comfortable and makes them like it. This formerly isolated place in the desert now is connected with the rest of China through rails, roads, flight routes leading to Beijing and communications networks. A large team of specialized, intellectual and talented people who are dedicated to their work is gathering at this place from universities and research institutes. The Center has well-equipped facilities for daily life and has received more than 40 delegations from abroad. It also dispatches its own people to participate international space technology events. A European senior space official wrote a letter to his Chinese colleagues after he returned home, saying that "the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is well-equipped and its technological levels are outstanding, fully capable of sending commercial satellites."

Ground personnel operate attentively.

　　Today, two launch pads attract more attention. One is a rocket launch pad set up in the 1950s and the other was built in the 1990s to rocket manned spacecraft.

　　In front of the old black and brown launch pad, a Westerner used to comment: "Here is the best rocket launch pad in terms of successful rates and the equipment here is so poor." Now, the launch pad standing under the blue sky and white clouds seems to be talking in voiceless words: China's space equipment and technology are one of the best in the world.

Space test and control station

　　The two symbolic launch pads lie only several thousand meters apart. The Chinese people rely on its own efforts to find its own way of development. China spent half a century in building the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center into a modern space town, which now has come unto the stage of the world.

　　By Ke Zhou, Liu Kejun and Wang Yanmei

　　(October 15, PLA Daily)