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News on China’s Space Program

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Celestial cheer

China’s space station edges nearer completion
Oct 22, 2021 (WiC 560)

Cold, arid and barren, the Gobi Desert stretches across a vast chunk of Inner Mongolian nothingness. But for the Chinese space programme it is a land of hopes and dreams. Since the creation of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre there in 1958, ...

Reach for the stars

China plays catch-up with Lenghu observatory
Sep 17, 2021 (WiC 556)

Chinese astronomy has a long history with the earliest known solar observatory – in Taosi, Shanxi province – dating back around 4,100 years. Despite those early beginnings, China lags behind in its star-gazing today. It has smaller ...

China’s space station mission raises concerns over rocket debris
May 14, 2021 (WiC 540)

The core module and control hub of Tiangong, China’s first permanent space station, is called Tianhe, or ‘Heavenly Harmony’. Its launch on April 29 meant that Tiangong is a huge step closer to becoming fully operational next year. The ...

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 ...

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