![[April 26, 1970] Red stars in space (Communist China and the USSR make leaps)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/700426dongfanghong1-672x372.jpg)
by Gideon Marcus
It's likely you missed the other big news in space given how much the flight of Apollo 13 dominated the air waves. But while we were busy ensuring that Lovell, Swigert, and Haise made it back home, the ChiComs and the Russkies were accomplishing some space spectaculars of their own:
If you look up in the sky, you'll see nine new stars, all of them Red!
The East is Red
Radio Peking announced the launch on its April 24th evening newscast, crediting Chairman Mao's leadership for the success. This makes China (the Communist one that we don't recognize as existing) the fifth nation to orbit a satellite with its own booster (Japan having beaten its neighbor to the punch by just two months). Thousands of Chinese marched through Tien An Men Square in an organized demonstration clearly planned in advance. To the sound of exploding firecrackers and the crashing of drums and cymbals, the young and old paraded with red banners and portraits of the Chairman while a People's Liberation Army group carried a man-high model of the Chinese ideogram for double-happiness, while downtown office buildings were lit with white lights and colored bulbs decorated trees along the Boulevard of Eternal Peace.
The satellite is called DongFangHong, which means "The East is Red", and as it orbited, the spacecraft broadcast on 20.009 megacycles the revolutionary song of the same name. Its eccentric orbit takes it nearly 1500 miles above the Earth and down to just under 300, circling the globe every 114 minutes. The satellite masses a respectable 173 kilograms, suggesting a rocket similar in capability to our Delta (compare, say, Relay 1). The satellite is being tracked closely both by the United States and by Nationalist China (Formosa/Taiwan).
The Dong Fang Hong satellite
America's reaction to the flight was something of a yawn. NASA Administrator, Dr. Thomas O. Paine, released this statement:
“This new development has been anticipated for some time. . . . It is a dramatic demonstration of the determination of the Chinese leaders, despite many problems, to put science and technology very high on their list of national priorities.”
Scientists at the Department of Defense and the Air Force displayed a distinct lack of surprise. Indeed, Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird told Congress on February 20 that he expected the Reds to try a launch soon. One unidentified DOD scientist quoted by the Associated Press stated that the launch did not necessarily mean that the ChiComs had developed an ICBM, which makes sense—the Delta is derived from the shorter ranged Thor IRBM. Still, Intelligence analysts estimated Communist China might be able to develop and deploy 10 to 25 intercontinental ballistic missiles by mid-1975, which could threaten the United States.
Or as Tom Lehrer might sing, "China's got the Bomb, but have no fear—they can't wipe us out for at least five years!"
Japan concurred, officials saying that if China had developed a guidance system for satellite launching, it soon would be able to fire intercontinental missiles with high precision. Some have expressed concern that, with the Communist Chinese entering the missile race, ABM development will be accelerated, derailing the ongoing Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT).
More positive were the U.K., whose Minister of Technology, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, congratulated Chinese government, their engineers and space workers on the launch, and West Germany, whose Bochum Observatory called the event a greater technological feat than the 1957 launch of Russia's Sputnik 1.
Meanwhile, the Soviets, long on the outs with their erstwhile sister country, devoted just 10 words on an inside page of Pravda to the launch. Tit for tat—the Red Chinese don't talk about Soviet flights, either. Romania, on the other hand, in a wider orbit from the USSR than other Warsaw Pact states, congratulated the Chinese for "fresh successes in the field of scientific investigation of outer space," and Albania, a long-time supporter of the Chicoms, also hailed the achievement. North Vietnam's news agency said that the launching "brings out the supremacy of socialism and contributes to the development of science and technology in the interests of progressive mankind." That rounds out the Communist response.
Pakistan President Yahya Khan, in a message to Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, called the launch a "great step forward," demonstrating the progress of China’s technology. He said the feat "by our friendly neighbor has been received by us with a feeling of admiration." It is no coincidence that India and Red China have been trading shots across their border, so even though Pakistan is far from a Communist country, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" seems to obtain.
Interestingly, Red China's first satellite is believed to have been the brain-child of Tsien Hsueh-shen, a former MIT and Cal Tech scientist who was a high-ranking Pentagon adviser during World War II. He was later charged with being a Communist Party member and booted from America in 1955.
Tsien at his deportation hearing in 1950
Well, we certainly showed them!
Communist Octuplets
On the 25th, the Soviets brought off what I believe is their first eight-in-one satellite launch. Kosmoses 336 through 343 went into medium Earth orbit around the 1000 mile high mark. No information has been released about the spacecraft, but it reminds me a bit of how we launch eight Initial Defense Communications Satellite Program (IDCSP) satellites at a time on Titan rockets. This suggests that the Soviets are developing a constellation of military communications satellites separate from their Molniya high-orbit comsats—perhaps for global military use, perhaps for use by missile subs or far-flung Communist countries like Cube or North Vietnam. It also means that the Russians have perfected the "space bus" architecture for rockets, allowing the deployment of multiple satellites from a single vehicle.
Artist's rendering of a Titan Transtage deploying IDCSP satellites similar to how the Soviets might have dispersed their Kosmoses
Incidentally, we (America) are a lot more on the ball with regard to Soviet satellites than I thought. Not only are we able to identify which of the "science" Kosmoses are spy sats, but we can even determine trends in their cadence and capabilities. Aviation Weekly had an article on it earlier this month, and it was fascinating reading.
So, all in all, an exciting month for the Eastern Hemisphere. Let's just hope that these developments presage the peaceful development of space…and not doom for the world
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