2023 Yearender: Chinese Gen-Zers aim for journey to the sky with more imaginative innovation propelled by China’s modernization process

In light of this, the Global Times is launching a series that elaborates on this unique path through the stories of ordinary people's New Year wishes. These wishes serve as a window to the changes in and achievements of Chinese society as Chinese modernization has brought Chinese people more concrete consensus, a more vibrant countryside, more imaginative innovation, more balanced education, a more dignified old age with stronger security, and a more confident civilization. This shows that Chinese modernization is the prerequisite and driving force for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

This is the third installment in the "Wish List" series, sharing the story of a group of secondary school students in Foshan, South China's Guangdong Province, who made a wish to "let taikonauts enjoy fresh fish soup in space." With their yearning for the vast universe, and their pride in China's scientific and technological progress, they have planted exploratory seeds in their hearts to embark on a journey to the sea of stars, through continuous scientific experiments that attempt to turn their creative ideas into reality. Their ambitious dream displays a country with more imaginative innovation propelled by Chinese modernization.

Li Shiyi often has a dream that is both fantastic and real. In the dream, her fish "fly" in the zero-gravity environment of space.

Nearly every day after school, the 17-year-old would go to the lab and check on the school of marlins in their artificial incubators, watching them swim nimbly in the sand and water, or lie quietly on the transparent walls of the incubators.

She often imagined that one day, instead of being placed in the school lab, the incubator would be sent to China's Tiangong Space Station. At an altitude of 400,000 meters above the earth, the carefully raised marlins would eventually appear on Taikonauts' dinner table.

Li has taken the first step toward fulfilling her dream. At the First International Space Science and Scientific Payload Competition (ISSSP) in May this year, Li and four other students shared their project of "experimental study on the cultivation of multiple generations of marlin in the space station," and won the bronze prize.

According to the ISSSP organizers, some of the winning projects selected through the competition will be recommended as candidates for a flight to the Tiangong Space Station, the International Space Station, and other scientific satellites.

"We are looking forward to seeing our experimental project would be adopted," Li told the Global Times with excitement. "I really hope that our taikonauts will enjoy fresh fish soup in China's space station."

'Send marlins to China's space station'

The first ISSSP, organized by the Beijing Institute of Technology, the Chinese Institute of Electronics, the International Academy of Astronautics, the China Space Foundation, and the Chinese Society of Astronautics, was the first-ever international space competition in China to gather and cultivate global talents and projects in space science and payload technology. It attracted students of all ages, and many participating teams submitted innovative experimental project ideas.

Li is a student at the Dali Senior High School (Dali) in Foshan. To select candidates for the ISSSP, in September 2022, when a new semester had just started, the school issued a space knowledge questionnaire to the freshmen, so as to discover the students' interests and their related knowledge in the field.

The enthusiasm of the students surprised Chen Hongyu, a physics teacher at Dali. He recalled that the school planned to select 10 candidates to form two teams for the ISSSP, and it received more than 200 completed questionnaires.

"Their enthusiasm for the competition was much higher than expected," said Chen, who also served as the leader of Dali's participating teams for the first ISSSP.

Li became one of the candidates. Always curious about the universe, Li said she hoped that by participating in this competition, she would make a small contribution to China's space industry.

Li had seen Shenzhou-13 crew member Wang Yaping introduced experiments on fish and rice cultivation through Tiangong Classroom lectures. The idea of "raising fish in space" jumped into the minds of Li and her teammates.

The team chose "cultivation of marlin in space station" as its experimental project for the competition after discussion. They learned that the marlin can adapt to a variety of environments, and it can be exposed to the surface of water for a long time as long as its body is kept hydrated. Moreover, the marlin is a nutritious and tasty fish, which can meet the nutritional needs of astronauts.

"Currently the taikonauts only eat vacuum-packed food, and that is not fresh enough. Fresh soups would make for a welcome change," Li told the Global Times. "We chose this project in the hope that if our taikonauts want to have soup in the space station, they will be able to enjoy fresh and delicious fish soup."

An experiment of raising fish began. The team spent weeks designing and making the marlin incubator. Under the guidance of Chen and other teachers at the school, it modified the incubator a dozen times, installing several devices including water inlets and outlets, vents, an oxygen balance device, and an automatic feeder.

Although the cultivation was carried out as a "controlled pre-experiment" due to limited conditions, the team still designed many small details that took the space environment into account, such as microgravity and certain ionizing radiation conditions, Chen said.

Considering that marlins may float up in microgravity, they designed a rolling gauze device at the opening of the incubator, "to help the floating marlins return to the water and sand in the incubator," he told the Global Times.

It was a process of constant innovative problem-solving. One day in November 2022, when temperatures in Foshan plummeted, the team found that the marlins in the incubator had frozen to death overnight.

"We were all stunned," Chen recalled. He encouraged the shocked and discouraged team members to start afresh. This time, they took temperature into account, adding a temperature control device to the incubator.

On May 11, the ISSSP final gathered many young students full of imagination, curiosity, and scientific research spirit. Some participants shared their idea of inventing a snake-shaped robot that can detect and repair faults in the space station, and others shared a vision of planting roses in space for possible mutagenesis breeding, which they hoped would result in the production of precious rose essential oil.

As participants in the secondary school group, Li's team presented data and observations from several months of marlin-raising experience, and answered questions raised by on-site experts. One of the experts asked the team what it would do with the leftover fish bones, Li said. "And we answered: that is exactly what our school's next team is going to be looking into - how to handle the household waste in space."