Chinas

China’s Tianwen 1 Mars orbiter takes amazing video selfie for lunar New Year

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China’s Tianwen 1 Mars orbiter is once again delivering stunning imagery, with a new video released to celebrate the lunar New Year. The 38-second clip shows shadows and sunlight moving across the body of Tianwen 1, with the sunlight causing insulation to move slightly due to thermal expansion. Mars then appears below the spacecraft, with … Read more

A Long March 8 rocket has arrived at the coastal Wenchang spaceport for the second mission of what is planned to be China’s first reusable launch vehicle.

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A Long March 8 rocket has arrived at the coastal Wenchang spaceport for the second mission of what is planned to be China’s first reusable launch vehicle.  The Long March 8 will launch in late February or early March and will be carrying 22 satellites for Chinese commercial space companies, including optical and radar Earth … Read more

News at a glance: Welcoming STEM students, a silent radar satellite, and China’s gene-edited crops | Science

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GEOSCIENCE Orbiting radar mapper goes dark The head of the European Space Agency said last week the agency may accelerate the launch of its next Earth-observing radar satellite, after a power supply anomaly caused one of its two orbiting radar satellites, Sentinel-1B, to go dark for more than 1 month. Since its launch in 2016, … Read more

Yutu-2: China’s rover finds sticky soil on the far side of the moon

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We haven’t been able to take a close-up look at the far side of the moon until now, and the discoveries being made by the Yutu-2 rover might prove important for future missions 19 January 2022 By Alex Wilkins A photo of the Yutu-2 moon rover, taken by the Chang’e-4 lunar probe AFP The first … Read more

China’s population may start to shrink this year, new birth data suggest | Science

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After many decades of growth, China’s population could begin to shrink this year, suggest data released yesterday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. The numbers show that in 2021, China’s birth rate fell for the fifth year in a row, to a record low of 7.52 per 1000 people. Based on that number, demographers estimate … Read more

China’s Shenzhou 13 astronauts manually fly cargo ship for emergency docking test

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China’s Shenzhou 13 astronauts conducted a manual rendezvous and docking test over the weekend to test emergency procedures for spacecraft visiting the Chinese space station. The complex test involved the Tianzhou 2 cargo spacecraft undocking from the Tianhe core module of China’s Tiangong space station. The astronauts aboard Tianhe then teleoperated Tianzhou 2, guiding it … Read more

China’s Chang’e 5 lunar lander is first to find water on the moon up close

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China’s Chang’e 5 lunar lander just marked a historic first: The spacecraft became the first to detect water on the moon at its landing site in real time. Chang’e 5 found water at its landing site near Oceanus Procellarum on the moon’s near side, using an instrument that detects water by determining spectral reflectance measurements … Read more

China’s $1 trillion ‘artificial sun’ fusion reactor just got five times hotter than the sun

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China’s “artificial sun” has set a new world record after superheating a loop of plasma to temperatures five times hotter than the sun for more than 17 minutes, state media reported.  The EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) nuclear fusion reactor maintained a temperature of 158 million degrees Fahrenheit (70 million degrees Celsius) for 1,056 seconds, … Read more

On China’s new space station, a robotic arm test paves way for future construction

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A large robotic arm on China’s space station has successfully grasped and maneuvered a cargo spacecraft in a crucial test ahead of upcoming module launches. The 33-foot-long (10 meters) robotic arm on the Tianhe module of China’s new Tiangong space station took hold of the Tianzhou 2 supply ship and moved it around 20 degrees, … Read more