Space law education in China: Status quo,shortcomings and possible ways out

Space law education has an essential role in the space capacity building of a country because of its importance for human resources development in space law. Comparisons between Canada and China, the European Union and China and the United States of America (USA) and China in space law degree education, course, teaching methodology, institute and practice and communication platform are provided in an attempt to review some issues which exist within the Chinese space law educational system and to seek a better choice for China’s space law education reform. Chinese space law education has achieved noticeable progress over the past two decades. However, it is still limited in comparison to its counterparts in Europe and Northern America. The range of the space law degree education programmes and space-law-related courses is comparatively limited. A gap remains between space law education and practice in China. Chinese space law classes are still dominated by the teacher-centred teaching methodology, although several universities have some new teaching practices. The establishment of seven space law-related research institutes plays an increasingly important role in Chinese space law education, space law and policy research and legal advisory services for the Chinese government and non-governmental sectors. However, these institutes still have a long way to go in comparison with their counterparts in Europe and Northern America. While China has established domestic research platforms for space law communication through international cooperation, it does not provide space law practice platforms for space law education. While international space law does not provide a direct legal foundation for space law education in China, Chinese educational laws can lay a profound legal foundation for Chinese space law education. To promote its national expertise and capacity in space law, based on the three-pillar model and the experiences of its counterparts in North America and Europe, China should adopt a systematic and sustainable regime for its space law education.     

Hardware qualification for scientific ballooning missions

The European Stratospheric Balloon Observatory (ESBO) initiative aims at simplifying the access to stratospheric balloon missions. We plan to provide platforms and support with instrument design in order to support scientists. During the design process, the inevitable question of qualification for the harsh flight conditions arises. Unfortunately, there is no existing standard for qualification of stratospheric ballooning hardware. Thus, we developed a qualification procedure for use within ESBO and similar projects.In this paper, we present our analysis of the environmental conditions in the stratosphere. While conditions at typical balloon float altitudes are similar to the space environment, there are also some relevant differences. For example, the thermal environment is dominated by radiation and thermal conduction, but the remaining atmosphere still supports a certain amount of convection. The remaining atmospheric pressure in the stratosphere also leads to reduced arcing distances. Vibrational loads are far less than for space missions, but quasi-static or shock loads may occur. The criticality of radiation increases with mission duration.Based on the environmental conditions, we present the qualification procedures for ESBO, which are based on the European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS) standards for space systems. Overtesting against too high requirements leads to overengineering, driving mission cost and mitigating the advantages of balloons over space missions. Therefore, we modified the ECSS standards to fit typical scientific ballooning missions over several days at altitudes up to 40 km. Furthermore, we analyzed design rules for space systems with regard to their relevance for scientific ballooning, including material and component selection. We present the experience from the hardware qualification process for the ESBO prototype STUDIO (Stratospheric UV Demonstrator of an Imaging Observatory). Even though boundary conditions are different for each individual mission, we aimed for a broader approach: We investigated more general requirements for scientific ballooning missions to support future flights.