Randy W Posted January 8, 2021 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2021 from China Pictorial on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/553929144732479/posts/3428136570645041/ Quote The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the leading force of the country's space industry, has released a plan for more than 40 space launches for 2021, a new high following the already busy and fruitful 2020. The construction of China's space station, the key space mission in the new year, will enter a crucial stage, according to the CASC. The country plans to launch the core module of its manned space station in the first half of 2021. Subsequent space missions include the launches of the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft and the Shenzhou-12 manned craft. Link to comment
Randy W Posted April 22, 2021 Author Report Share Posted April 22, 2021 from the Scientific American China Is Set to Launch First Module of Massive Space Station The new orbiting laboratory will host research from Chinese and international scientists By Ling Xin on April 21, 2021 Quote With the core module of the Chinese Space Station (CSS) scheduled to lift off at the end of April, the culmination of a project the nation’s government initially envisioned in 1992 is finally entering the construction phase. After the core module reaches space, China plans at least 10 more launches of other major modules, as well as crewed and cargo missions, to complete the station’s assembly by the end of 2022. At that time the CSS will join the International Space Station (ISS) as the only fully operational space stations in orbit. The T-shape, 100-metric-ton CSS will comprise three major modules: the 18-meter-long core module, called Tianhe (“Harmony of the Heavens”), and two 14.4-meter-long experiment modules, called Wentian (“Quest for the Heavens”) and Mengtian (“Dreaming of the Heavens”), which will be permanently attached to either side of the core. As the station’s management and control center, Tianhe can accommodate three astronauts for stays of up to six months. Visiting astronauts and cargo spaceships will hook up to the core module from opposite ends. Both it and Wentian are equipped with robotic arms on the outside, and Mengtian has an airlock for the maintenance and repair of experiments mounted on the exterior of the station. Tianhe has a total of five docking ports, which means an extra module can be added for future expansion. The station is designed to operate for more than 10 years. The CSS has less than one fourth the mass of the ISS—the largest and most expensive human-made structure in space, which was cooperatively built by 15 nations. “We did not intend to compete with the ISS in terms of scale,” says Gu Yidong, chief scientist of the China Manned Space program. Instead the three-module configuration is “based on China’s needs for scientific experiments” and “what we consider a reasonable size for the sake of cost-effectiveness.” Link to comment
Randy W Posted May 1, 2021 Author Report Share Posted May 1, 2021 The core module Tianhe launched on Thursday is the first module of China's space station. NEWS.CGTN.COM China Space Station: what will astronauts' living space look like? The astronauts who will conduct tasks on China's space station will be enjoying a larger space than their predecessors. from CGTN on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/565225540184937/posts/6199825086724926/ Quote The core module Tianhe launched on Thursday is the first module of China's space station sent to the space. It is not only a control center but a main space where astronauts will live and conduct scientific works. Quote The airtight cabin of the core module Tianhe offers 50 cubic meters of space for the astronauts, over three times bigger than Tiangong-1 or Tiangong-2 space lab with only about 15 cubic meters, said Bo Linhou, deputy chief designer of the China's space station. Link to comment
Randy W Posted May 7, 2021 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2021 Hey - WHAT'S UP ?? No, you are almost certainly not going to be hit by a 10-story, 23-ton piece of a Chinese rocket hurtling back to Earth. That said, the chances are not zero. https://nyti.ms/3epMTWf from the NY Times on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/5281959998/posts/10152676083844999/?substory_index=0 Heads Up! A Used Chinese Rocket Is Tumbling Back to Earth This Weekend. The chances of it hitting a populated area are small, but not zero. That has raised questions about how the country’s space program designs its missions. Quote No, you are almost certainly not going to be hit by a 10-story, 23-ton piece of a rocket hurtling back to Earth. That said, the chances are not zero. Part of China’s largest rocket, the Long March 5B, is tumbling out of control in orbit after launching a section of the country’s new space station last week. The rocket is expected to fall to Earth in what is called “an uncontrolled re-entry” sometime on Saturday or Sunday. Whether it splashes harmlessly in the ocean or impacts land where people live, why China’s space program let this happen — again — remains unclear. And given China’s planned schedule of launches, more such uncontrolled rocket re-entries in the years to come are possible. The country’s space program has executed a series of major achievements in spaceflight in the past six months, including returning rocks from the moon and putting a spacecraft in orbit around Mars. Yet it continues to create danger, however small, for people all over the planet by failing to control the paths of rockets it launches. Link to comment
Randy W Posted May 9, 2021 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2021 China Says Debris From Its Rocket Landed Near Maldives Most of the debris burned up on re-entry Sunday morning, China said. The head of NASA accused it of “failing to meet responsible standards.” Quote It said most of the debris had burned up on re-entry. It was not immediately clear whether any of what remained had landed on any of the Maldives’s 1,192 islands. The possibility, however slight, that debris from the rocket could strike a populated area had led people around the world to track its trajectory for days. The administrator of NASA, Bill Nelson, issued an unusual rebuke after China’s announcement, accusing the country of “failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.” The rocket, a Long March 5B, launched the main module of China’s next space station, Tiangong, on April 29. Usually, the large booster stages of rockets immediately drop back to Earth after they are jettisoned, but the 23-ton core stage of the Long March 5B accompanied the space station segment all the way to orbit. . . . China’s space administration, which had said nothing about uncontrolled re-entry until Sunday, announced that the debris had entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Mediterranean before flying over the Middle East and coming down near the Maldives, south of India. People in Israel and Oman reported sightings of the rocket debris on social media. The Maldives government had no immediate response to China’s announcement. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who tracks the comings and goings of objects in space, said on Twitter that an ocean splashdown had always been the most likely outcome, but that the episode raised questions about how China designs its space missions. “It appears China won its gamble (unless we get news of debris in the Maldives),” he wrote. “But it was still reckless.” Link to comment
Randy W Posted May 15, 2021 Author Report Share Posted May 15, 2021 (edited) Tianwen-1, China’s first mission to orbit the red planet, is set to release a rover called Zhurong on a harrowing descent to the surface. from the NatGeo on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/23497828950/posts/10158414899313951/ China's Mars rover touches down on the red planet After a historic landing on Mars, the Zhurong rover is ready to search for signs of water and life. Quote The touchdown makes China the second country in history to deposit a rover on the surface of Mars. After months in orbit around the red planet, the Tianwen-1 spacecraft released the Zhurong rover for a landing in Utopia Planitia, a vast plain that may once have been covered by an ancient Martian ocean. The 529-pound rover survived a perilous descent to the surface, including atmospheric entry, slowing from supersonic speeds with a parachute, and finally using retrorockets to safely alight on the ground. Named for an ancient Chinese fire god, the 529-pound Zhurong rover is similar in size to NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on the red planet in 2004 and sent back exciting images and data about the planet’s surface conditions. China’s rover could make additional important discoveries concerning water and past habitability on the planet, paving the way for future human missions to Mars. . . . Successfully descending to the surface of Mars is an extraordinary challenge. Before today, only NASA had safely landed and operated spacecraft on the Martian surface; in 1971, the Soviet Mars 3 lander transmitted half of a photo before falling silent about 100 seconds into the mission. By landing and roving on Mars, China jumps ahead of a number of spacefaring peers. . . . A new rover on Mars Once Zhurong’s six wheels roll off the landing platform and onto the Martian dust, the rover will expand its foldable, butterfly-like solar panels and explore the area for a primary mission lasting three months. The vehicle could work well beyond this conservative goal however—the solar-powered Spirit and Opportunity rovers had primary missions of about 90 days, and they each ended up exploring Mars for years. Utopia Planitia, thought to be the site of an ancient sea, has sedimentary layers that could contain evidence of past water. Even more exciting, these layers of rock could contain traces of any past life on Mars, says James Head III, a planetary scientist at Brown University. “Because the pre-selected landing site is close to an ancient ocean shoreline, and distinct from others, the science data will uncover more secrets of Mars,” Long says. The site complements the research being carried out by NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers in the ancient lakes of Gale and Jezero craters, respectively, Head adds. The Zhurong rover carries a suite of six instruments. A pair of panoramic cameras and a multispectral imager will provide information about the terrain and its composition, while an instrument with a laser will vaporize rocks to analyze their makeup, similar to the laser spectrometers aboard Curiosity and Perseverance. A magnetometer will measure magnetic fields in tandem with an instrument on the orbiter, and a climate station will measure the local atmosphere, temperature, pressure, wind, and sound on Mars. One of the most exciting instruments aboard the rover, however, is a ground-penetrating radar, which will be used to search for pockets of water or ice below the surface. Head notes that NASA’s Viking 2 lander, which set down in a region slightly north of Zhurong’s landing site in 1975, imaged fascinating phenomena, including ice contractions and frosts on the surface of Mars, and polygon patterned terrain which may have been created by contractions of subsurface ice with changing seasons. . . . The next chapter of Chinese space exploration China will openly share the data from Tianwen-1 and Zhurong the same way it has shared data from its lunar exploration missions, Long says, benefiting planetary scientists around the world. The mission will also set the stage for China’s next planned voyage to Mars—an audacious sample-return attempt scheduled to launch around 2028. Beyond Mars, the country has plans to launch a Jupiter probe, including a possible landing on the moon Callisto, to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid, and to send a pair of Voyager-like spacecraft toward the edges of the solar system. from CGTN on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/565225540184937/posts/6279013342139433/ Hi Mars! China's probe lands on Red Planet Zhurong, China's first Mars rover, has touched down on the Red Planet, China National Space Administration (CNSA) confirmed on Saturday morning. The rover is ready to operate on the planet for at least 90 Martian days. For more: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-05-15/China-s-probe-lands-on-Mars-10h4ctrNmla/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1GXng2-3AD93W6FtWr5h2MLJwLoo9YTEO_xWOK-heOf4xmQNqL5vxVC_k CGTN Infographic by Li Jingjie Quote Facing the dusty environment on the planet, designers used a new dust-proof material for the rover, and even if the rover gets dirtied with the Martian dust, it can shake it off with vibration. They also kept an identical copy of Zhurong the rover in the lab. If the rover encounters any problem on Mars, the ground crew will conduct simulations for a resolution before issuing instructions to the rover on Mars. . . . So far, the probe has been in space for 295 days and is about 320 million kilometers from Earth. Edited May 15, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history) Link to comment
Randy W Posted May 30, 2021 Author Report Share Posted May 30, 2021 China's Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft docks with space station module Link to comment
Randy W Posted June 10, 2021 Author Report Share Posted June 10, 2021 China's upcoming manned mission – Shenzhou XII – is expected to set off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China's Gobi Desert to the Tianhe core module of the nation's space station. A Long March 2F carrier rocket with the Shenzhou XII spacecraft on top of it was moved to its launch pad at the space complex on Wednesday evening, according to the China Manned Space Agency. The agency said in a brief statement the rocket and the spaceship will receive prelaunch examinations and tests, adding the launch center is ready for the coming mission. from China Daily on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/191347651290/posts/10159538271276291/ Link to comment
Randy W Posted June 11, 2021 Author Report Share Posted June 11, 2021 Selfies from the red planet A photo of China’s Zhurong Mars rover and its landing platform, captured on the red planet by a camera detached from the rover, June 11, 2021. Xinhua Xinhuanet: China unveils new Mars images showing national flag on red planet Link to comment
Randy W Posted June 16, 2021 Author Report Share Posted June 16, 2021 It is worth noting that the backup crew members for the #Shenzhou12 mission that will launch on Thursday morning include one woman astronaut – Wang Yaping, who was part of the Shenzhou-10 mission in 2013. from the Global Times on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/globaltimesnews/posts/4198803963533805 Link to comment
Randy W Posted June 18, 2021 Author Report Share Posted June 18, 2021 (edited) Thursday’s launch of the Shenzhou-12 mission and its docking with China’s Tiangong space station have been billed as major steps forward in the country’s lofty space ambitions. Read more: http://ow.ly/DTHM50FckYy from the Sixth Tone on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/1570821646570023/posts/2973817289603778/?substory_index=0 . . . and from China Daily Astronauts reach space station Quote Based on project plans, the Tianzhou 3 cargo ship will be launched in September to dock with Tianhe, and in October, another three-crew team will fly with the Shenzhou XIII to the module to stay there for six months. In 2022, two large space labs will be launched to connect with the core module. Moreover, two manned missions and two robotic cargo flights will be made to continue construction of the Tiangong station, which is scheduled to be completed for formal operation to begin around the end of 2022. One of China's most adventurous space endeavors, Tiangong will consist of three main components－a core module attached to two space labs－with a combined weight of nearly 70 metric tons. The entire station is set to work for about 15 years. Upon its completion, Tiangong will be manned regularly by groups of three astronauts in periods lasting several months. During handovers to new three-astronaut groups, the station will accommodate up to six astronauts. Edited June 18, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history) Link to comment
Randy W Posted June 18, 2021 Author Report Share Posted June 18, 2021 Chinese astronauts explore space station that will be their home for three months The three Chinese astronauts entered the Tiangong space station, after arriving on board the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft. from the SCMP on Facebook https://fb.watch/6c6Jr2GcPS/ Link to comment
Randy W Posted June 19, 2021 Author Report Share Posted June 19, 2021 10 people in space now. They are "not very far" from us, 200 miles above our head (distance btw DC & NYC). They fly 5 miles/sec, 8 times faster than bullets. 3 Americans, 2 Russians, 1 French, 1 Japanese on ISS. 3 Chinese on China's space station. They're all heroic pioneers. from CGTN on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/565225540184937/posts/6470955699611862/ Link to comment
Randy W Posted June 27, 2021 Author Report Share Posted June 27, 2021 China releases new videos and photos captured by Tianwen-1 Mars probe during the landing and roving exploration. The video includes: -landing process -Mars rover moves backwards -Mars rover swerves -Sound on Mars The rover has operated 42 Mars days and moved 236 meters. Watch on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/globaltimesnews/posts/4228523727228495 Link to comment
Randy W Posted September 17, 2021 Author Report Share Posted September 17, 2021 China’s Tiangong astronauts return with vision of ‘new heights’ in space travel Mission commander tells his crew ‘real gold fears no fire’ moments before their successful re-entry after 90 days in space Their journey completes another milestone in China’s ambitious space programme Chinese astronauts return to Earth after three months on a space station. Photo: Xinhua Quote The ground rescue team’s helicopter arrived at the landing site within minutes of the touchdown, with the “Warrior” all-terrain vehicles close behind. After an inspection of the capsule’s condition, it was opened with medical personnel on hand to conduct a preliminary health check. Each of the crew was assigned two doctors. This was the astronauts’ first trip to and from the space station. During their three-month stay, they conducted tests, performed maintenance and went on spacewalks. Nie and crew members Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo spent 90 days in space. Link to comment
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