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China’s Tiangong space station is still under construction but the astronauts aboard are already bringing aspects of Chinese traditions and culture into space. Shenzhou 13 mission astronaut Wang Yaping, China’s second woman in space and the first aboard the space station, played a song with a guzheng, a traditional Chinese string instrument, aboard the Tianhe … Read more
A group of students has confirmed that a rocket stage poised to hit the moon next month is from a Chinese Long March launcher, not a SpaceX Falcon 9 as originally thought. The rocket body, from the Chang’e 5-T1 mission, is set to slam into the moon’s far side on March 4, more than seven … Read more
One of China’s newest launch startups has been raising serious amounts of money for its range of increasingly complex “Gravity” launch vehicles. Orienspace was founded in 2020 and announced itself last year after securing initial funding of $65 million, detailing plans for a series of rockets. The firm has just secured a further $47 million, … Read more
By Michael Le Page, Clare Wilson, Jessica Hamzelou, Sam Wong, Graham Lawton, Adam Vaughan, Conrad Quilty-Harper, Jason Arunn Murugesu, Layal Liverpool, Carissa Wong and Alex Wilkins People register to undergo PCR testing in Wong Tai Sin, Hong Kong, China, 5 February, 2022 Marc Fernandes/NurPhoto/Shutterstock Latest coronavirus news as of 12pm on 7 February Even with … Read more
Festive red adorns China’s Tiangong space station in new footage celebrating the lunar new year in orbit. The Shenzhou 13 astronauts are the first to celebrate the holiday in orbit, according to the China National Space Administration, and were given ample supplies to do so. “They have decorated the space station core module with traditional … Read more
The Chinese company Space Transportation is developing a “rocket with wings” for space tourism and point-to-point travel. “We are developing a winged rocket for high-speed, point-to-point transportation, which is lower in cost than rockets that carry satellites and faster than traditional aircraft,” the company said in a recent interview with Yicheng Times. The space plane … Read more
This zoomed image of the “mystery hut” spotted by China’s Yutu 2 rover in Von Kármán crater on the far side of the moon shows it to be a rabbit-shaped rock called “jade rabbit.” (Image credit: Ourspace/CNSA) China’s Yutu 2 rover has reached the so-called “mystery hut” on the far side of the moon that … Read more
When China’s Chang’E-5 probe visited the Moon in December of 2020, it didn’t just collect a sample of lunar material to return to Earth. While it was there, the mission took observations of the surrounding lunar rock – data vital for contextualizing the sample in future studies. Those observations have turned out to be … Read more
Right now our solar system is barreling into a region of space that we know next to nothing about. For about 60,000 years, our sun has been traversing the local interstellar cloud (LIC), a region of gas and dust within a mostly empty bubble that was carved out of the Milky Way by supernovae millions … Read more
High above the red planet, China’s Mars orbiter Tianwen 1 has captured a series of incredible, alien images of our neighboring planet. The shots were captured by a small camera that was deployed by Tianwen 1. Released on New Year’s Day, they show Tianwen 1, looking lonely above the red planet, as well as Mars’ … Read more