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Victoria Bela

With a multitude of aerospace achievements under its belt – including landing the first humans on the moon – the United States has carved a bold path through space.
But what many may not know is that several China-born experts were among the scientists, engineers and astronauts who helped rocket the US to the forefront of the global space race.
The ongoing importance of Chinese and other foreign talent in American STEM fields was highlighted last month in a report released by the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
“Students and scholars from abroad make an outsized contribution to advances in US science, innovation and invention, helping to keep the nation at the forefront of technological development,” said the report, which was commissioned by the US Department of Defence.
“The value proposition for international talent participation is clear and stark: the United States simply does not, and for the foreseeable future will not, develop sufficient domestic STEM talent at all levels of expertise to fully support the nation’s research and innovation system.”
The report on foreign talent programmes emphasised that, despite the importance of Chinese scientific expertise in the US, participation has not always been easy.
“The nation also has had difficulty cultivating research environments that are welcoming and inclusive for all and do not inadvertently discriminate against people on the basis of national origin or ethnicity during, and in the aftermath of, the US Department of Justice’s China Initiative,” the report said.
Despite the fluctuating political relationship between the two countries, China-born engineers have long been involved in US STEM fields – including aerospace.
Here the Post examines China-born engineers who have contributed to the development of US aerospace programmes – and whose success has allowed us to better understand the Earth and what lies beyond.

Qian Xuesen
Co-founded the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is Nasa’s only federally funded lab, and has had a leading role in space exploration, with spacecraft designed by the lab having reached every planet in our solar system. And Shanghai-born aerospace engineer Qian Xuesen was there right at its beginning.
It started with the “Suicide Squad” – a research team that Qian joined in 1936 at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) – which was given the moniker due to their enthusiasm for testing rocket engines.
Born in 1911, Qian was fresh from receiving his master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when he joined the team led by aerospace engineer Theodore von Karman. While at Caltech, he also completed his PhD in aviation and maths.
The first time the group referred to themselves as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in a document came in 1943. The lab was under army jurisdiction during World War II; it was transferred to the newly formed space agency, Nasa, in 1958.
During his time at JPL, Qian designed an intercontinental space plane which inspired the design of the X-20 Dyna-Soar. This, in turn, was a precursor for the US Space Shuttle.
The lab is still managed by Caltech and over the years has helped build the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope and more.
Despite the contributions Qian made to the US space programme, he was never allowed to become a US citizen. His career in the country ended in the 1950s due to alleged communist ties. After spending five years under house arrest, he returned to China in 1955.
Upon his return, Qian became the father of the Chinese missile and space programme, whose work helped launch the country’s first satellite into space, and led to the development of the Long March space rockets.

Tien Chang-lin
Developed insulating tiles for the US Space Shuttle
As a pioneer in thermal science and engineering, Tien Chang-lin’s work not only contributed to the field of aerospace, but also to semiconducting, energy conservation and utilisation, thermal insulation, and nuclear reactors.
Born in Wuhan in 1935, Tien received his PhD in mechanical engineering from Princeton University in 1959.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Tien investigated radiative heat transfer and the interaction of radiation with fibres, particulates and other nano materials. His work helped design thermal protection for the Space Shuttle, including thermal tiles.
His research also contributed to the design of boosters used to catapult satellites on the Saturn space rockets, the launch vehicles used for the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, according to a report commissioned by the Committee of 100, an organisation of Chinese-Americans.
In an interview for the University of California, Berkeley, Tien revealed that Nasa called him in 1980 when they were having trouble getting thermal tiles to stick to the surface of the Space Shuttle, a problem that he helped to solve.
Tien spent most of his career at UC Berkeley, where he served as chair of the mechanical engineering department, vice-chancellor for research and finally as university chancellor.
In 1976, he became one of the youngest members of the US National Academy of Engineering. The organisation later awarded him the NAE Founders Award in 2001, its highest honour, recognising lifelong contributions and accomplishments benefiting US citizens.
Helen Ling
‘Human computer’ who aided the US space race against the Soviet Union
When the Soviet Union took an early lead in the space race with the launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth-orbiting satellite, America was keen to catch up. So, Caltech’s JPL helped the US launch its own satellite just a year later.
This mission and the many that followed were made possible by computing teams at the laboratory known as “human computers” who performed crucial calculations.
Most were women, and some went on to become some of the first computer programmers at Nasa.
China-born Helen Ling was vital in this area, working first as a mathematician at the laboratory, and then as one of the supervisors for the computing group in the 1960s.
Born in 1928, Ling received a degree in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame before joining the laboratory.
Leading a team which performed trajectory calculations, Ling was well-known for only hiring women, and for creating a work environment that encouraged women to enter STEM positions at the laboratory.
One of the talented women Ling hired was Victoria (Vickie) Wang, a Guangzhou-born mathematician and engineer who joined the computing group in 1973.
Wang told Nasa that much of the computing group’s work “had to do with mission needs such as power, propellant, space trajectory and [the] number of instruments a spacecraft could carry”.
During Ling’s time at JPL, she developed software for the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, Magellan spacecraft, TOPEX/Poseidon mission to measure ocean topography and the Mars Observer mission.


Taylor Wang
First person of Chinese origin to go into space
In 1985, Taylor Wang made history when he blasted into space aboard the STS-51B Challenger mission – the first China-born person to do so.
One of a team of seven, Wang spent a week in space as a payload specialist, conducting various experiments that later helped with the creation of permanent orbiting research laboratories.
Born in Shanghai in 1940, the scientist joined JPL in 1972 after receiving his PhD in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles the previous year.
Wang became the principal investigator for several experimental projects at Nasa, and is credited with inventing an acoustic levitation and manipulation chamber for the Nasa Drop Dynamics experiments.
His work received attention at Nasa, and he was chosen to join the STS-51B flight – also known as the Spacelab 3 mission – which was the first operational flight for the Spacelab orbital laboratory designed by the European Space Agency.
Fourteen successful experiments were conducted during this mission, including investigating crystal growth, drop dynamics, cosmic rays, solar and planetary simulations, and observing laboratory animals.
After his career at Nasa, Wang became a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering at Vanderbilt University.
Ming Han Tang
Chief engineer of Nasa’s hypersonic research programme
Throughout his career, Chongqing-born aerospace engineer Ming Han Tang held prominent positions at Nasa and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, which included leading programmes headed by the US Department of Defence.
Born in 1939, Tang began his decades-long career at Nasa at the Dryden Flight Research Centre in 1966, where he worked on projects like the high-altitude interceptor prototype YF-12.
He also worked on the development of the M2-F2 wingless aircraft, which became an early predecessor to the Space Shuttle.
After a brief period at Lockheed Martin in the 1980s, Tang returned to Nasa and became the assistant director of the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) programme, which sought to develop reusable hypersonic/transatmospheric vehicles.
From the late 1980s until the conclusion of the programme in the 1990s, Tang worked at the NASP Interagency Office at the Pentagon, first as principal deputy director, and then director.
From 1996 to 1999, Tang served as the chief engineer of the Nasa High-Speed Research programme, which aimed to produce economically viable supersonic aircraft.

Fuk Li
Manager of the Nasa Mars Exploration programme
In 2005, Hong Kong-born physicist Fuk Li became manager of the Mars Exploration programme at JPL, which started with the aim of finding out whether Mars was a habitable planet for humans.
Li later also became the director of the Mars Exploration Directorate.
During Li’s time at the helm, the programme led a number of Mars missions, including launching the 2005 Mars Reconnaissance orbiter and the Mars 2020 mission which landed the Perseverance rover, shortly after which Li retired.
The programme has also landed other operational rovers on the red planet, including the Spirit and Curiosity rovers.
Born in 1953, Li received his PhD in physics from MIT in 1979, after which he joined the Nasa laboratory.
Before heading the Mars programme, he served as deputy director of Nasa’s Solar System Exploration directorate, manager of the New Millennium Programme, and manager of the Earth Science programme.
Li Zhijin
Developed marine satellite data processing tools for Nasa
China-born data scientist Li Zhijin spent more than 20 years at Nasa developing processing tools for marine data gathered by ships, buoys and satellites.
Li’s data processing tools, used by Nasa, the US Navy and other government agencies, allowed for data from different monitoring devices to be converted into a common format for more efficient processing.
This allowed for high-resolution modelling of the ocean and how it interacts with the atmosphere, which can be used for in-depth climate studies and to improve weather forecasting.
The work he did has been used in ocean forecasting systems like the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, and the US Naval Research Laboratory.
Li received his PhD in atmospheric dynamics from Lanzhou University in 1992, and later moved to the US to work at Nasa.
In 2022, Li returned to China to begin a professor role at the Fudan University department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.


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Science

The US has led the charge in space exploration but China-born experts have helped America each step of the way. Photo: Reuters/Nasa

Qian Xuesen pictured at Caltech in 1949. Photo: CNS

Professor Tien Chang-lin was an expert in thermal science, developing insulating tiles for the US Space Shuttle. Photo: SCMP

Ming Han Tang worked on hypersonic aircraft, including this TSV X-plane. Photo: Ming Han Tang

How Chinese engineers helped build the US semiconductor empire: a timeline

Chinese scientists and engineers have played a vital role in America’s leadership in the field of advanced electronics. Photo: Shutterstock

CMOS, invented by Chih-Tang Sah, is now used in the vast majority of integrated circuits in devices around the world. Photo: Shutterstock

Details of China’s lunar station revealed as project expands with a dozen new partners

By 2050, the  China-led moon base will be a network of research facilities at the moon’s south pole, equator and far side, according to senior space official Wu Yanhua. Image: China National Space Administration

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Georgia Tech is cutting ties with Tianjin University over national security concerns. Photo: Dreamstime/TNS

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Professor Franklin Tao, formerly of the University of Kansas, has had all four convictions relating to wire fraud and false statement overturned by US courts. Photo: science.org

China Initiative inquiries left researchers feeling ‘targeted, alienated’, US agency says

The National Institutes of Health is the US government’s primary agency for biomedical and public health research. Photo: Shutterstock

News

China

Throughout America’s ambition to lead the world in space exploration, engineers born in China have played major roles


Throughout America’s ambition to lead the world in space exploration, engineers born in China have played major roles.
