China launches gamma-ray space telescope
China today successfully launched the Space-based Multi-band Variable Object Monitor (SVOM) gamma-ray space telescope, a 20-year-long joint Chinese-French project to monitor astronomical gamma ray bursts.
SVOM was placed in orbit by a Long March 2C rocket lifting off from China’s Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages — which use very toxic hypergolic fuels — crashed inside China. UPDATE: See this video from China. Apparently one stage landed close to homes, spewing that orange hypergolic fuel.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
64 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 75 to 42, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 64 to 53.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
China today successfully launched the Space-based Multi-band Variable Object Monitor (SVOM) gamma-ray space telescope, a 20-year-long joint Chinese-French project to monitor astronomical gamma ray bursts.
SVOM was placed in orbit by a Long March 2C rocket lifting off from China’s Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages — which use very toxic hypergolic fuels — crashed inside China. UPDATE: See this video from China. Apparently one stage landed close to homes, spewing that orange hypergolic fuel.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
64 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 75 to 42, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 64 to 53.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
You been here four hour–you go now
https://x.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1804542638034661522
Jeff Wright: Thank you. I have added this video to the post.
Mr. Zimmerman,
of course it is a disgrace that China is exposing its population to these dangers. But a small correction: what we see here as an orange plume of fumes is not (!) the fuel, as you wrote, but the remaining oxidizer still in the tank, namely N2O4 (nitrous oxide). The fuel is probably UDMH, which produces white fumes.
Questioner: N2O4 is nitrogen tetroxide, not nitrous oxide.
David M. Cook, you are right. The translator was not working properly, which I missed.
Nitric acid has been used with kerosene before IIRC—just not in this rocket.