Sun Jiadong

Early life and study in the Soviet Union

Sun Jiadong was born in April 1929 in Fu County (today Wafangdian), Liaoning. According to a profile of the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” scientists published by the Communist Party Member Network, he entered the preparatory program of Harbin Institute of Technology in 1948 to study Russian and later moved to the automotive department. He was then sent to study aircraft design at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in the Soviet Union, and joined the Chinese Communist Party there in August 1956. In a 2009 oral account he said that he graduated in 1958 with a Stalin gold medal and returned to China the same year.

From missiles to satellites

After returning, Sun was assigned to the missile general design department of the First Branch of the Fifth Academy of the Ministry of National Defense and worked on missile development. In 1967, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' satellite team paralysed by the Cultural Revolution, Zhou Enlai and Nie Rongzhen had Qian Xuesen rebuild it; Sun said Qian moved him from missile work that year to coordinate the technical work of the satellite's overall design department, at the age of 38. He recalled that the team reduced the mission to four goals—to get the satellite up, track it, hear it and see it—and that after political screening “half of our team of more than 100 people were found unqualified,” though those sidelined still came into the laboratory at night to help. Dongfanghong-1 was launched successfully on 24 April 1970.

Official accounts credit Sun with leading the overall design of China's first artificial satellite, its first recoverable satellite and its first geostationary experimental communications satellite. According to Sun and official media, China's first recoverable remote-sensing satellite was lost in 1974 when its rocket crashed about 20 seconds after liftoff; he led staff in sifting the debris in the desert to find the cause, and a new satellite was launched successfully a year later.

Application satellites, BeiDou and the Moon

Sun went on to serve as vice president and president of the Fifth Academy of the Seventh Ministry of Machine Building (now the China Academy of Space Technology), chief engineer of the Seventh Ministry, and vice minister of the Ministry of Astronautics and of the Ministry of Aerospace Industry, later becoming a senior technical adviser to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. He was chief designer of three second-generation application satellite projects: the Dongfanghong-3 communications and broadcasting satellite, the Fengyun-2 geostationary weather satellite and the China–Brazil Earth Resources Satellite.

He was also chief designer of the first and second generations of the BeiDou navigation satellite system; according to the CPPCC's news site, he handed the post to Yang Changfeng in 2014. When China launched its lunar exploration program in 2004, Sun, then 75, became its first chief designer and proposed implementing it in stages. Chang'e-1 was launched on 24 October 2007, entered its working lunar orbit on 7 November, and was deliberately crashed into the Moon after meeting its goals within its one-year design life. Official sources say he led the development of 45 satellites over 60 years in the space program. He was a member of the 7th, 8th, 9th and 12th CPPCC National Committees.

Honors

Sun received two special-class National Science and Technology Progress Awards in 1985, was elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991, received the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” Meritorious Service Medal in 1999, the 2009 State Preeminent Science and Technology Award in 2010, and the title of “Reform Pioneer” in 2018. On 29 September 2019 he was awarded the Medal of the Republic at the Great Hall of the People. Asteroid 148081 is named after him. On 24 April 2020 Xi Jinping wrote a reply letter to Sun and ten other veteran scientists who had worked on the Dongfanghong-1 mission.