Hello and welcome to our new episode of Ni Hao Europe. This time we're going on a journey into space. Europe. This time we're going on a journey into space. At 9.22pm Beijing time on June the 17th 2021, the Long March 2F Yao 12 launch vehicle carrying the Shenzhou 12-man spacecraft had launched to the new Chinese space station and docked with the station after six hours of flight. The three Taikonauts, as the Chinese astronauts are called, are scheduled to stay in space for three months. Now this is the 19th mission of China's manned space project since its inception and the first manned mission of the space station phase. The astronauts are the new neighbors of the ISS. China had launched the first module of their new space station into space at the end of April, at that time still without a crew. A fitting name for the living room of the new space-flat sharing community, Tianhe, Heavenly Harmony. Tianhe weighs 22 tons, is almost 17 meters long, and a good four meters wide. It's the third and largest space station China has built so far. Now, the Chinese station orbits the Earth at an altitude of about 380 kilometers. The International Space Station also flies in this low Earth orbit. However, the Sky Palace will be significantly smaller and six times lighter than the ISS. China could possibly soon provide the only bastion of mankind in low Earth orbit. It's not yet clear whether the ISS will continue to operate beyond 2024. However, NASA is already planning the Gateway Station on the Moon. So what's going on in space in the next few years? Well, here's somebody who knows. He's the director of the Austrian Space Forum, and he's called Gernot Gruemer. He's in Innsbruck. Hello, Gernot. Hello. Nihao from Innsbruck. Well, what we're seeing right now is really a gold rush in space. Not only the Chinese space ambitions are out of this world, but also other agencies like European Space Agency, NASA and many other countries are setting their goals far beyond the Earth orbit. Plus, we also see quite a gold rush in the space economical sector at the same time. Think of space tourism, think about mega constellations like the ones that are offering internet from space. So actually China is one of the primary partners, one of the leading nations taking the ambitions far beyond Earth orbit and that also means setting your eyes not only on the Moon but probably also on Mars in the future. Space travel is no longer in the realms of fantasy and film, but happening in reality for more and more people. With space tourism taking off as a new adventure for the super wealthy, we asked a veteran astronaut from Austria about his thoughts on new trends in space travel. Austria's first and so far only manned space mission was Austromere 91 in October 1991, which was carried out jointly with the Soviet Union. At that time, the scientific cosmonaut Franz Fiebach spent six days in the Russian space station Mir. I would now like to extend a warm welcome to him. Welcome Franz Fiebach. Hello everyone, I'm glad to be here. Franz, 30 years ago, space travel was still a great adventure. Looking back, is it still the greatest experience of your life? Well, I was flying 30 years ago into space and certainly this is one of the greatest, if not the greatest experience in my life. I was lucky. I had many great adventures and experiences in my life. But certainly a space flight is the optimum what you would like to do. Well, when you fly into space and you look down to Earth, you're just thrilled and impressed by what you're seeing. The incredible beauty of our planet, very blue, it's the blue planet, 75% or so are covered by water and you see that. And then of course you are thrilled by recognizing one or the other area which you have seen. And this is of course very, very impressive. British billionaire, Richard Branson's flight in July ushered in the era of space tourism. What do you think about that? Richard Branson and now Jeff Bezos also, they started space exploration in a different way with space tourism. And I believe it's a good thing. It's opening up space, although only for a short period of time, for a few minutes, but for many more people would get the opportunity now to enjoy a space flight. And I think this is a good thing. now to enjoy space flight and I think this is a good thing. By the way, did you realize that given the fact that the space station has been up and running for more than 20 years now, since the late 20th century not a single second will all humans were walking on Earth at the same time, because there has always been a presence. There were 16 people in space at the same time, including the three taikonauts, the astronauts of the Chinese space station. So I think we're just getting into a situation where we say, this sounds like science fiction, but this is real now. As more international cooperation becoming increasingly important in future research in outer space, China also aims to build its own space station by 2022, and it has welcomed extensive international projects in deep space exploration. With the successful return of the three taikonauts to Earth, China launched a cargo ship mission to deliver supplies and experimental equipment to its Tiangong space station and is gearing up for a second crewed mission, scheduled for mid-October. The crew is expected to stay in space for an even longer time, about half a year, in order to further develop the space station. One organization that keeps a close eye on the activities in space is the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, based in Vienna. We now switch to the UNO City in Vienna to the director of UNUSA, Simonetta Di Pippo. Well, thanks for being with us on the program today. My pleasure. First question I want to ask you, Simonetta, is the office in Vienna promotes international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. How do the International Space Stations contribute to this? Well, the activities in space, in this specific case in low-earth orbit, so in microgravity conditions, allow a lot of experiments, both inside and outside a space station, covering a certain number of different fields, which can bring benefits to, I mean, to improve the quality of life of citizens on Earth. So what we do in space is really extremely important in so many different fields on Earth. Now, in lower orbit, we have the International Space Station, developed and operated by a certain number of partners, and we have the China Space Station upcoming. And we have since long an agreement with CMSA, the China Manned Space Agency, to conduct experiments from all over the world in the China Space Station as soon as it's ready to host them. And this has been done through a memorandum of understanding, great support from China on this. And also we recently, I mean a couple of years ago, selected nine experiments, which is a huge number of experiments, based on a scientific value, their scientific value, through a competitive process that we, the Office for Outer Space Affairs, were in charge of. So it's really interesting collaboration. And we cannot wait to see the future of the China Space Station and our experiments on board. Now at the heart of space exploration are the Sustainable Development Goals. These are, for example, the eradication of poverty or climate change. So what is the role of China in this goal? Access to space for all is a way for us to support emerging and developing countries thanks to the support of spacefaring countries. And China is one of the most, let's say, strong spacefaring countries. And in this manner, so this agreement for the space station is really supporting the potential achievements of the SDGs. One important thing that I would like to mention overall is that we made the study a few years ago, combining geolocation and Earth observation data. We analyzed the 169 targets underpinning the 17 sustainable development goals to find that almost 40% of these targets can only be achieved thanks to space. So space becomes really a tool for socio-economic sustainable development and for policy and decision-making processes all over the world. And China, thanks to this agreement with us, is supporting us in this process. So you would say then that China plays an important role in space cooperation? China is an active partner in the Committee on the Space for Users of Outer Space, and also is an active partner in bilateral cooperation with the Office for Outer Space Affairs. So it's really contributing to our vision in a way, which is bringing the benefits of space to humankind, which means everyone everywhere. And we foster, we try really, the Office for Outer Space Affairs always to support international cooperation through what we call proactive multilateralism. It's quite interesting. We have 95 member states currently. We hope to reach 100 this year at the Committee on the Peaceful Users of Outer Space. The debate is sparkling sometimes, but here in Vienna, everything is agreed by consensus. So the process may sound long, but it's very successful. So we look forward for the next round of experiments on the China Space Station and I'm sure that the Access to Space for All initiative will grow even more, also thanks to the Chinese contribution. China is now making its full efforts to facilitate Access to Space for All initiative by sending open invitations and welcoming its international counterparts to join its adventure in space. So far, progress has been made, many training programs are underway. Back in 2017, Samantha Cristoforetti and Matthias Maurer, two European astronauts, joined Chinese taikonauts for a nine-day high-sea survival training session, a crucial step towards a long-term collaboration between the European Space Agency and China Manned Space Agency in a final attempt to fly European astronauts together with taikonauts to the Chinese space station in 2022. I was personally fairly surprised to see on the training schedules a couple of years ago the first Mandarin language courses in Cologne, which is the home to the European astronaut corps of the European Space Agency. And we said, well, of course, it does make sense, of course, because at one point, the International Space Station will see the end of its lifetime. It was already supposed to happen a couple of years ago. It got prolonged and prolonged again. But there's only a limit to it until when the ISS can be rolled out. So it's very likely that in a couple of years from now, there will be a time when there will be only the Chinese space station available to our society. And so it does make a lot of sense to allow European astronauts to participate in this as well and talk about joint collaborations, because I think we can learn a lot from each other. Both countries and both societies, as and both societies have a long tradition of exploration and the scientific muscles and the engineering capacity to go beyond Earth orbit as well. So I think it's not a question of if I think we're going to see European astronauts also on board the marvelous piece of Chinese engineering of the Tiangong station, but it's only a matter of when it's going to happen. I think that we're gonna see this in the next few years, and maybe this is only the start of future bilateral collaborations, which will take us beyond Earth orbit to the moon, or maybe even to Mars. The trip to Mars is approaching fast. China has mapped out an ambitious plan for further deep space exploration. This year alone, its Mars mission, named T-ENVEN, questions to heaven, reached the orbit around the planet, landed a craft on the surface and successfully released a land rover. T-ENVEN has two components. One is an orbiter that runs around Mars and looks into the atmosphere of Mars and to remnant fields and everything about there, but also is used for communication with the lander. And the orbiter also has a magnetometer, and we kind of did consultations for the design of the magnetometer. It was built in China with parts from Germany, for example, but we helped in the initial design. And for that, the Austrian flag was the launcher of the Tianwen mission when it took up into space. It has always been, only in the very first beginnings, there were national programs. Of course, the Americans did the Apollo program, but just with Americans, but they had a German chief engineer. And then also the first German spacecraft were built, maybe with a bit of help of the United States. But soon thereafter there was more cooperation between at that time the United States and Europe. Europe built the European Space Agency, where the Europeans built together. And it's really necessary. Space is global. And sometimes there's of course national pride, as in every country. You want to show that you as a country can do lots of things. But even for the bigger countries, like the United States, or like China or Japan, on the other hand, it's much better to work together with other countries, with scientists from other countries, because you can achieve more. You have more brains to work on the things, more technicians, engineers to work on those, and it becomes more and more necessary. In my opinion, China is now at the front, maybe together with the Americans, in some areas together with Europeans, but even ahead of Europeans in other areas, at the front of space research. I think I was part of the very first Chinese scientific mission, it was called Double Star, and there is a launcher behind me, Long March, that was launched in 2003. I think the biggest thing for me was that actually the Mars rover, that the landing was okay at the first time. Because many landers have been lost on Mars, sometimes because inch and meters were kind of miscalculated by the Americans. They had most of the landings, but they had most of the mis on the pie. So that besides having the moon landing, which there was a history already that you go to Mars for the first time and you land and everything works. That's really, yeah, I admire that. Our reporter talked to Dr. Steller, who works at the onboard computer team for one of his projects on the European-China collaboration in outer space, as well as the theories behind this mission. Well, there's a European-Chinese cooperation in a space mission investigating the link between the solar wind, so the particles emitted from the sun, with the magnetosphere of the Earth, the ionosphere into Earth. And this mission is called SMILE, so it's just an abbreviation, a nice name. And on board of this spacecraft there are four instruments, two from China, two from Europe, and we are participating in one instrument which is developed by the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. And our contribution is, one thing is this digital processing unit, it's a kind of board computer which is controlling the instrument, doing the measurements, collecting the data and then packing them together and sending them down to Earth for further usage by the scientists. And in addition, we built the anti-electronics box, which is providing two of these computers, then two power supplies and some specific control electronics for the sensors. According to China National Space Administration, China is not only promotes international cooperation in peaceful exploration and utilization of outer space, but also offer assistances to other developing countries, help them to monitor natural disasters like forest fires and floods. As well as this, China is also planning to conduct deep space exploration, including exploring asteroids and the Jovian system, collecting samples from Mars and exploring the polar region of the Moon. In its future plan, China is expected to send a second lander to Mars by 2028, bringing more samples from the Red Planet to detect whether Mars can be humans' second home in the future. Well that was our trip to space. So see you next time in Nihao Europe.