Donghua Textiles helps China to take the “Jinqiao” for nine days

China-Singapore Online News on May 27th (Duan Ran Xu) Recently, China used the Long March 4C carrier rocket at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center to successfully launch the No. 4 mission to launch the "Bridge Bridge" relay star. The satellite is threaded and a bridge of communication between the ground and the back of the moon.

The "Bridge Bridge" relay star is erected for the Lunar No. 4 lunar exploration mission to be carried out at the end of this year. It is the world's first communication satellite that runs at the L2 point of Lagrange on the Earth, and will become the first in human history. Dedicated relay communication satellites outside the Earth's orbit.

The relay satellite has a mass of 425 kg and a life expectancy of more than 5 years. The body has a rectangular parallelepiped configuration, and a large-diameter umbrella-shaped parabolic antenna is mounted on the top, which will assume the responsibility of two-way relaying to the moon. Like an umbrella. When it launches, it will be put away, and when it enters space, it will open in due course. The umbrella-shaped parabolic antenna, which bears important tasks, uses the satellite-borne antenna metal mesh developed by Professor Chen Nanliang from the Textile College of Donghua University.

The scientific name of the "Umbrella" is called "Star-borne Antenna Metal Network". It not only created the history of China's satellites using independent research and development of metal mesh antennas, but also played a milestone role in the localization of key products of flexible antennas. The smooth application of the network in the rail has laid a solid foundation. The metal mesh is the key component of the satellite antenna to reflect electromagnetic waves and the basic material of the spaceborne mesh antenna. However, for a long time, China's spaceborne antenna metal mesh mainly relies on imports . Since 2008, Professor Chen Nanliang and the relevant research institutes have joined hands to embark on a road to a national space mission. Continuously break through technical barriers and truly achieve localization.

For a long time, Professor Chen’s team has always adhered to four words: textile wisdom. In the past, most of the satellite-borne antennas used traditional aluminum materials such as aluminum alloys, which are heavy and not hard, which is not conducive to the satellite antennas being able to retract in space. During the trial and error, the team found that the gold-plated molybdenum wire made the satellite antenna both lightweight and stable. The material has high strength, low coefficient of thermal expansion, is not easy to break, and has high reflectivity. It is an excellent "material selection" for manufacturing space-expandable mesh antenna reflectors. However, it is not easy to make it into a metal mesh. It must be tough and tolerant of the external force of launching and flying. It must be soft and can be edited and easily stored in space. Since it is necessary to "soften and soften together", it is necessary to use the textile warp knitting technique that Professor Chen is good at.

Textiles are usually latitude and longitude cross-sections, while warp knitting is like knitting a sweater to bend the yarn into a loop to form a fabric. Warp knitting technology is more practical than other production techniques when producing mesh fabrics. The mesh fabrics produced can be of different sizes and shapes, and the fabric shape can be stabilized and firm without any special finishing by its own structure. This is perfect for satellites that "survive" in the harsh environment of space.

After long-term unremitting research, Professor Chen's team used ultra-fine wire strands and warp knitting technology to achieve a technological breakthrough in the twisting of extremely thin gold-plated molybdenum wire fibers with only a quarter of the hair, and also innovative design and manufacture. Dedicated parallel, warping and warp knitting equipment and a full set of production processes. According to the team, this series of technology and process breakthroughs not only smoothly realized the satellite antenna metal mesh "rigid and soft", but also made the weight of the "big umbrella" less than 90%, which is more convenient to carry. With the large size, the high-power communication of Beidou navigation satellites and mobile communication satellites has benefited from this. Through the unremitting efforts of Professor Chen's team, a small metal mesh weaved can greatly contribute to the development of China's space industry. (Finish)