Researchers at a space center in China announced that they had found a jammer outside their base just weeks before a planned rocket launch, local news sources said. The device was found in a car traveling near the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu province about two weeks ago, Yangtze Evening News reported on Sunday.
The Space Center did not say whether the incident was an act of sabotage, but the source said a jammer could interfere with a rocket’s navigation systems and cause it to stray off course.
China will send three astronauts to the Tiangong Space Station via the Shenzhou-14 rocket. Among the crew is Liu Yang, who was the first Chinese woman to be sent into space in 2012.
Scientists at the Jiuquan Space Center began detecting “abnormal” interference signals earlier this month and tracked them for several days, the Yangtze Evening News reported. Discovered by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), this device was a typical small frequency transmitter with a maximum range of 10 meters. The news source reported that such devices can be purchased from websites such as “Taobao”, a major Chinese e-commerce site.
Although this device is small, it can be used to jam the signals of already weak satellites since it is planned to communicate from points above 12,000 meters above the Earth, a scientist from the Center told SCMP.
If this crewed mission is successful, the final construction phase of the Tiangong Space Station, China’s answer to the International Space Station (ISS), will have begun. Chinese astronauts have been banned from the ISS since 2011 due to US security concerns.
Tiangong, meaning “Palace of Heaven”, consists of three modules to be installed individually, and the first module has been in orbit since April 2021.
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