Predicting weather changes, providing colorful satellite TV programs, and even enriching our dining table with space food, seemingly advanced space technology is changing human life. In 1950s, man-made earth satellite was successfully launched for the first time, which opened a new era for human beings to explore, study space environment and develop and utilize space resources. Liu Zhenxing, an academician of China Academy of Sciences, said that space is the fourth largest environment for human development after land, sea and atmosphere. Zhu Yilin, an academician of the International Academy of Astronautics and a researcher at the China Academy of Space Technology, said that there are three main areas of space technology, the first is satellite applications and satellite applications, the second is manned space flight, and the third is deep space exploration. In the field of application satellites and satellite applications, China has basically owned a variety of application satellites with different orbits and functions, but this can not fully meet the requirements of developing space resources and serving mankind. Manned space flight extends the range of human activities from land, ocean and atmosphere to space, which enables us to have a broader and deeper understanding of the whole universe, make full use of space and develop its extremely rich resources. Mr. Zhu Yilin said that the weather forecast, which is increasingly inseparable from our life and work, is the credit of China's Fengyun-1 and Fengyun-2 meteorological satellites. Among them, Fengyun-1 runs through the north and south poles of the earth and observes the wind, humidity and temperature around the world. Fengyun-2 satellite is fixed above the equator of east longitude 105 degrees. It mainly observes the weather changes in China and the western Pacific, and sends back a satellite cloud picture every half hour. Meteorological satellites have played a great role in protecting people's lives and property, especially in typhoon-prone areas along the southeast coast of China. Through the analysis of cloud images, we can judge the generation of typhoon three days in advance and predict its development route. For example, 1986, the meteorological department predicted that the typhoon would land in Shantou, Guangdong 72 hours in advance, and the relevant departments informed more than 3,000 fishing boats to return to Hong Kong in advance, harvesting more than 3 million mu of rice in advance, strengthening 35 reservoirs and reducing losses by 654.38 billion yuan. In the past, we could only watch a few channels on TV, but now there are too many programs to watch, thanks to communication satellites. For example, in the past, TV programs from Beijing had to be transmitted to Guangzhou. If microwaves are used, a 50-meter-high microwave station must be built every 50 kilometers. The distance between the two places is more than 2,000 kilometers, and more than 40 stations will be built. In addition, microwave transmission is linear. When laying lines in Guangzhou, TV signals can only be received in Guangzhou and along the line. Satellites cover a surface, and signals can be received everywhere in this surface, which is wider and faster than microwave transmission. In addition to TV programs, international calls in China are now transmitted by satellite, especially mobile phones. Space life science is one of the hottest topics in space science. In the past 40 years, many biological satellites and other spacecraft have loaded some animal and plant seeds into space, and scientists have been observing and testing the effects of space environment on organisms with great interest.

The research scope of space life science includes two aspects: one is to study the effects of space environment on various biological cells and organs, especially the effects of space radiation and microgravity on biological development, repair, immunity and bones, and to study the prevention and treatment of immune function changes, bone loss, muscle relaxation, space motion sickness and damage to cell tissue regeneration caused by weightlessness and radiation; The second is to find extraterrestrial life and study the origin of life. Zhu Yilin said that according to incomplete statistics, since 1987, China has carried out 10 more than 400 varieties of plant seeds. After more than 70 units participated in the ground test, many scientific research results were obtained. For example, the rice seed "Nongken 58" carried by 1988, after four generations of screening, has now stabilized at more than 600 kilograms per mu. For example, there are tomatoes. Last day, the output increased by more than 20%. The strangest thing is flowers. The marigold carried in 1996 originally bloomed in two months, but it has not failed in four months after space breeding. The high vacuum and microgravity environment provided by spacecraft orbital flight is regarded as a treasure house by scientists, which provides people with scientific experiments and production process conditions that are difficult to obtain on the ground, and can carry out scientific experiments that are impossible or difficult to carry out on the ground and produce materials, industrial products and drugs that are difficult to produce on the ground.

High vacuum provides an ultra-clean environment. Microgravity provides an extreme physical condition in which the influence of gravity is very weak. If the natural convection caused by gravity is basically eliminated, the diffusion process becomes the main factor; The buoyancy in the fluid basically disappears, and the separation and fluctuation of components caused by different liquid densities disappear, and the liquid is only constrained by surface tension; Wetting and capillary phenomena are intensified; Hydrostatic pressure disappears.

Under the condition of zero gravity or microgravity, no impurities will be mixed in container melting, and high purity and high quality alloys can be obtained; Metals or nonmetals with different specific gravity can be evenly mixed to obtain new alloy materials; It can overcome the defects of uneven composition and high density in ground processing and grow semiconductor materials such as high quality and large diameter single crystal gallium arsenide. Can produce 100% roundness of bearing balls and other ball industrial products. On the ground, bearing balls are not really spherical due to the influence of gravity.

Space pharmacy is an important aspect of vacuum and microgravity environment utilization. On the ground, due to the gravity of the earth, the culture will precipitate, and the microorganisms in the precipitate will die due to lack of oxygen; If oxygen is delivered and stirred, the formed low-pressure bubbles will destroy the cells again; If defoamer is added, it will reduce the solubility of oxygen, hinder the reproduction of microorganisms and form a vicious circle. In microgravity environment, the culture solution contains a lot of bubbles and will not precipitate. Microorganisms can get oxygen at any time, and their growth rate is more than twice that of the ground. It can be made into many drugs with high efficiency and high purity, such as epidermal growth hormone for treating burns, erythropoietin for treating anemia, immune serum for preventing and treating viral infection, trypsin inhibitor for treating emphysema, interferon for treating cancer, etc.