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News on China’s Space Program

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The long journey home

Latest Chinese lunar mission is bringing Moon rocks back to Earth
Dec 4, 2020 (WiC 521)

China’s Chang’e 5 mission to collect rock samples from the Moon is a complex one involving multiple stages. On Thursday evening it completed a key step – blasting off from the Moon’s surface right on schedule. According to a video ...

Martian chronicles

China launches its first planetary probe to look for water on Mars
Jul 31, 2020 (WiC 506)

Turns out you can’t just launch a Mars mission at any old time. There is a brief window of opportunity every 26 months when the Red Planet aligns with Earth, vastly reducing the distance between the celestial bodies. This window is the ...

China’s rival to GPS becomes an investment star
Jul 3, 2020 (WiC 502)

Two incidents in the 1990s are said to have convinced the Chinese government of the necessity of developing their own satellite positioning system. In 1996 when the People’s Liberation Army was staging a military exercise during a period of ...

Did Long March rocket launch go to plan?
May 15, 2020 (WiC 495)

What counts as a successful rocket launch? Simply getting into space? Presumably any astronauts on board are interested in getting home safely too. But it seems fair to expect that parts of the rocket shouldn’t come crashing back to Earth in an ...

Launching a new model

Geely announces a new business line in low-orbit satellites
Mar 13, 2020 (WiC 486)

In 1978 NASA scientist Donald J Kessler published a paper on the potential for satellite collisions. The earth’s orbit, he posited, might eventually get so crowded that satellites would start bumping into each other. When that happened the ...

The final frontier

Space scientist latest to face US visa problems
Nov 1, 2019 (WiC 472)

As vice chairman of China’s National Space Administration Wu Yanhua is used to technical challenges. During his time at the agency China carried out it longest manned space mission (33 days), launched its second space station and landed a probe ...

Reach for the sky

Commercial rocket launch successes cause buzz
Aug 30, 2019 (WiC 464)

On April 24 1970, China launched its first satellite. At 9.35pm a Long March rocket – the first of its kind – blasted off from Jiuquan in Inner Mongolia, marking China’s entry into the Cold War space race. In many ways it was a miracle ...

A genuine first

China boldly goes where none have gone before – the dark side of the Moon
Jan 11, 2019 (WiC 436)

It was a stunning step for the Chinese when they became the first nation to land a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon on January 3. But was it the same giant leap for mankind that astronaut Neil Armstrong first proclaimed 50 years ago (this ...

Dockless bikes to help drive China’s satellite navigation system’s ascent
Jan 12, 2018 (WiC 393)

Cinema’s most famous encounter between the skies and a bike took place 36 years ago in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movie E.T. In a famed scene the 10 year-old protagonist Elliott and his alien friend fly through the night sky ...

Xinwei hopes for satellite boost
Jan 6, 2017 (WiC 350)

China’s leaders had been hoping that exports of its bullet trains would win foreign allies both geopolitically and economically. But its ‘railway relations’ have suffered setbacks in a series of countries (WiC329), including notably ...

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