October 11 Taikonauts Fei Junlong, 40, and Nie Haishen, 41 - blasted off on a 5 day Space trek in a Shenzhou 6 capsule. The mission was top-secret, China feared others would nose into their space tech secrets - based on a re-engineered version of Russia's Soyuz including a complete Russian space gear package on the flight. Today a possible explanation to the secrecy arrived. Image courtesy of chinabroadcast.cn. (Click to enlarge)
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Hey comrades, from where the suits? Russian spy charged with selling space tech to China
Posted: Nov 14, 2005 07:19 pm EST
October 11 Taikonauts Fei Junlong, 40, and Nie Haishen, 41 blasted off on a 5 day Space trek in a Shenzhou 6 capsule. The Chinese space trek was broadcast live on Chinese TV, but that's where the open policy ended. No foreign media was allowed to attend the launch, and an unnamed Chinese military attache at the Chinese embassy in Canberra held a secret key to the rocket should it come crashing down in Australia. China feared others would nose into their space tech secrets - based on a re-engineered version of Russia's Soyuz including a complete Russian space gear package on the flight.
Illegal sale of secret space technology to China
Today a possible explanation to the secrecy has arrived. Following a 2 year investigation, Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, has charged three senior executives at Mashexport, a state-run company dealing with foreign space contracts, with illegal sale of secret space technology to China.
Igor Reshetin, the head of Mashexport, was charged last month and his aides Sergei Tverdokhlebov and Alexander Rozhkin, have been placed in custody, accused of selling about $1 million worth of secret space technology, theft and fraud.
Who else?
The scam is reported to have included fake firms registered on lost or forged passports and a contract signed with a Chinese company in 1996 under an intergovernmental agreement between Moscow and Beijing on Russian assistance to develop the Chinese space sector. The company received its research license for the Russian space agency in 1996 and has since worked with American, European and Chinese aerospace organizations. The company is based outside Moscow in the space industry center and mission control facility for Russian space flights.
US have the Astronauts, Russian's the Cosmonauts - and now China keep sending their very own Taikonauts to Space! In 2003, China became the third nation - after US and Russia - to launch a human into space on its own. Yang Liwei circled the Earth 14 times and landed by parachute in China's northern grasslands after a 21 1/2-hour flight.
"Taikong" is a Chinese word that means space or cosmos, its pronunciation is also close to "taikong ren", the Chinese words "space men".
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