China National Space Administration

China National Space Administration (CNSA), Chinese government organization founded in 1993 to manage national space activities. The organization is composed of four departments: General Planning; System Engineering; Science, Technology, and Quality Control; and Foreign Affairs. The chief executive of the CNSA is the administrator, who is assisted by a vice administrator. Its headquarters are in Beijing. The CNSA operates three launch facilities: Jiuquan, in Gansu province; Taiyuan, in Shanxi province; and Xichang, in Sichuan province.

China’s space program evolved largely in secret under the joint control of the Chinese military and the Commission on Science, Technology, and Industry for the National Defense. After the communist takeover of 1949, the Chinese engineer Qian Xuesen, who had helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., U.S., returned to China, where he became the guiding figure in the development of Chinese missiles and launch vehicles, both originally derived from a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile. In 1956 Qian was named the first director of the Ministry of National Defense’s Fifth Research Academy, which was founded to develop ballistic missiles and which later was in charge of the first steps in China’s space program. In 1964 the space program was placed under the Seventh Ministry of Machine Building. The Seventh Ministry became the Ministry of Aerospace Industry in 1983. In 1993 the Ministry of Aerospace Industry was split into an independent Chinese Aerospace Corporation, which supervised most Chinese space-equipment manufacturers, and the CNSA.

China has developed a family of Chang Zheng (Long March) boosters, which are used domestically and serve as competitors in the international commercial space launch market. Its space development has concentrated on applications such as communications satellites and Earth-observation satellites for civilian and military use.

China initiated its own human spaceflight program in 1992. The spacecraft, called Shenzhou, that it developed for the effort was modeled on Russia’s time-tested Soyuz design, but it relied heavily on Chinese-developed technologies and manufacturing. Following four years of unmanned spacecraft tests, the CNSA launched China’s first taikonaut (astronaut), Yang Liwei, into orbit on Oct. 15, 2003. In so doing, it became the third country—after the Soviet Union and the United States—to achieve human spaceflight.