Space technologies developed in decades-long research are closely related to human life as many have been used or will be used to improve our lives, a leading Chinese space scientist said.
Hu Wenrui, an academic with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said many space technologies were used in our daily life. For example, meteorological satellite helps forecast natural disasters in advance and communications satellite have turned the world into a "global village."
"Space astronomy, the purely scientific part of space sciences, works to discover how the universe operates and evolves. Such findings will directly change our knowledge system," Hu said.
Space sciences fall into five categories, namely space astronomy, space physics, moon and broader space exploration, geoscience, life science and micro-gravity science.
Life science and micro-gravity science, seemingly far away from daily life, have profound impact once relevant technologies are applied, said Hu who is also an academic with the International Academy of Astronautics.
He said that protein, a basic substance to form life, is barely understood by humans who only know the functions of a certain type of protein, but not its structure. Less than one hundredth of millions of proteins in a human body have been found.
In a micro-gravity space environment, protein can develop large crystal for structural analysis. Successful analysis of one protein, if applied to medicine development, can greatly shorten a new medicine's R&D time and improve its quality.
In making alloy, space material science is highly helpful. Drops blending two liquids are found to move according to the law of capillary traction, which can be controlled under micro-gravity circumstances to produce highly even alloy.
"Our exploration of the space has dual purposes. One is to get energy and resources, the other is to migrate people if necessary. It is far from being realized, but it will come."