Chinese space engineers bring their expertise to Games' opening ceremony

China's space industry workers are known for their ability to create engineering marvels such as sending a rover to roam the moon's farside and landing a robot to explore the Red Planet.

However, instead of heavens and distant planets, the latest display of their wisdom and expertise took place on the ground – the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, in northern Beijing on Friday evening, during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games.

Engineers from China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the country's leading space contractor, were tasked with 11 major components of the 140-minute ceremony.

"As a crucial technical contractor, we were responsible for the design and construction work for the stage, ground-based display, 'ice cube', 'ice fall', backstage monitoring, communications and some other systems," the State-owned conglomerate said in a statement on Friday night after the opening ceremony.

The "ice cube", a cubic structure covered by LED screens, was an example of how engineers took advantage of their know-how to handle technical challenges, the statement said.

The main body of the 400-metric ton cube weighed 180 tons and needed to be gradually elevated during the ceremony's performance section, requiring engineers to devise a reliable method to lift it.

Designers and technicians from the Beijing Institute of Special Engineering Machinery, which specializes in large mechanical platforms such as rocket launch pad, developed a multilayer, foldable frame capable of elevating the big cube in only 43 seconds with only a 1-millimeter error.

Another visual marvel – a 10,100-square-meter ground-based display screen – was built by engineers from the Beijing Aerospace Automatic Control Institute.

They used industrial internet technologies to connect tens of thousands of individual screens and monitor their conditions. To make sure there would be no mistake during the important ceremonies, engineers also prepared four data links for the colossal screen, leaving sufficient backup.

"The designs and equipment (provided by CASC) worked very well and far exceeded our expectations," Zhang Yimou, a renowned filmmaker and director of the opening ceremony, was quoted as saying by the CASC statement.

One of the world's largest space industry enterprises, CASC is the developer and maker of the Long March series carrier rockets, Shenzhou spacecraft, Tiangong space station and Chang'e lunar probes.

The space industry giant was selected in 2019 as one of the leading contractors of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, because the games' organizing committee hoped that the company could use its experience and expertise in sophisticated programs to support the sports events.