Tag: China

A new Defense Department report says that China is aggressively ramping up its space program.

8:39 am

The competition heats up: A new Defense Department report says that China is aggressively ramping up its space program.

China will continue to augment its orbiting assets, with the planned launch of 100 more satellites through 2015. These launches include imaging, remote sensing, navigation, communication and scientific satellites, as well as manned spacecraft.

China is pursuing a variety of air, sea, undersea, space, counterspace and information warfare systems, as well as operational concepts, moving toward an array of overlapping, multilayered offensive capabilities extending from China’s coast into the western Pacific. China’s 2008 Defense White Paper asserts that one of the priorities for the development of China’s armed forces is to “increase the country’s capabilities to maintain maritime, space and electromagnetic space security.”

Further, China continues to develop the Long March 5 rocket, which is intended to lift heavy payloads into space. LM-5 will more than double the size of the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) payloads China is capable of placing into orbit. To support these rockets, China began constructing the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in 2008. Located on Hainan Island, this launch facility is expected to be complete sometime this year 2013, with the initial LM-5 launch scheduled for 2014.

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The Chinese national who had been arrested at Dulles airport as he left for China with a NASA laptop has been released after pleading guilty to one charge, having porn on the laptop.

11:01 pm

The Chinese national who had been arrested at Dulles airport as he left for China with a NASA laptop has been released after pleading guilty to one charge, having porn on the laptop.

Investigators found no classified information on the computer. As part of the release agreement, however, the man must leave the U.S.

Though the man, Bo Jiang, was very careful to bring nothing secret with him when he tried to flee to China in March, the circumstantial evidence suggests that he should not have had access to this information in the first place, and that in the past he might have illegally funneled classified information to China.

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A Chinese scientist who worked as a contractor for NASA was arrested yesterday on a plane about to leave for China.

9:07 am

A Chinese scientist who worked as a contractor for NASA was arrested yesterday on a plane about to leave for China.

Agents learned Friday that Jiang was to return to China on a one-way ticket Saturday, the affidavit said. He flew from Norfolk to Dulles International Airport outside Washington, where he boarded a plane bound for Beijing. Federal agents pulled him off the flight and searched his belongings. During what they called a “consensual encounter,” the agents asked Jiang what electronic media he had with him. He told an agent from the Department of Homeland Security that he had a cellphone, a memory stick, an external hard drive and a new computer.

But during the search, according to the affidavit, agents found an additional laptop, an old hard drive and a portable memory chip called a SIM card. He was arrested, and made his initial court appearance Monday.

It appears that the restrictions Congress placed on hiring foreign nationals had some merit. Moreover, it appears that the accusation by one congressman that NASA has been trying to circumvent those restrictions is true.

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China’s next manned mission is now set for this summer.

12:47 pm

The competition heats up: China’s next manned mission is now set for this summer.

The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft will take flight sometime between June and August, the program said in a statement. It will deliver its crew to the Tiangong 1, where it will spend two weeks conducting tests of the station’s docking system and its systems for supporting life and carrying out scientific work.

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An update on the Chinese manned program.

9:29 am

An update on the Chinese manned program.

The original script called for [the space station] Tiangong 1 to be followed by Tiangong 2, which would have been a module of the same basic design as Tiangong 1. Tiangong 2 was expected to have tested more advanced life-support systems than Tiangong 1, but there would be no major changes to the spacecraft. It was expected that two or three crews would be launched to this module.

Towards the end of the decade, China would then launch Tiangong 3, which was slated to be an entirely different class of spacecraft. It would be larger and more capable. Tiangong 3 was expected by some analysts to be a precursor to the types of modules to be used in China’s future space station, slated for launch around 2020.

According to Yang’s presentation, we can forget about Tiangong 2. Or at least, we can forget about Tiangong 2 as it was originally planned. China still plans to launch a mission with this name, but it would seem that the large laboratory module originally known as “Tiangong 3” has now been designated as the new Tiangong 2.

In other words, China is accelerating the admittedly slow pace of their manned program.

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Is the recently discovered Imperial tomb in China too dangerous to enter?

4:47 pm

Is the recently discovered Imperial tomb in China too dangerous to enter?

After discovering a secret palace hidden in China’s first emperor massive burial complex, Chinese technicians are nervous. Not because Qin Shi Huang’s tomb is the most important archeological discovery since Tutankhamun, but because they believe his burial place is full of deadly traps that will kill any trespassers. Not to talk about deadly quantities of mercury.

The secret courtyard-style palace tomb is a mind-numbing discovery. Situated in the heart of the Emperor’s 22-square-mile (56-square-kilometer) mortuary compound guarded by more than 6,000 (and counting) full-size statues of warriors, musicians and acrobats, the buried palace is 2,263 by 820 feet (690 by 250 meters). It includes 18 courtyard houses overlooked by one main building, where the emperor is supposed to be. The palace—which has already been partially mapped in 3D using volumetric scanners—occupied a space of 6,003,490 cubic feet (170,000 cubic meters). That’s one fourth the size of the Forbidden City in Beijing—for just one tomb.

Experts believe that the 249-foot-high (76-meter) structure covered with soil and kept dry thanks to a complex draining system, hides the body of the emperor and his courtiers. Nobody knows what’s the state of their bodies, but one of the leading archeologists believes that they are most likely destroyed by now.

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China’s Chang’e 2 lunar probe, now out of lunar orbit, did a fly-by of the 3 mile wide asteroid Toutatis as it zipped past the Earth last week, resulting in some spectacular images.

2:17 pm

China’s Chang’e 2 lunar probe, now out of lunar orbit, did a fly-by of the 3 mile wide asteroid Toutatis as it zipped past the Earth last week, resulting in some spectacular images.

Launched on October 1, 2010, Chang’e 2 orbited the Moon for 8 months before being redirected last year to the L2 Lagrange point, roughly a million miles on the side of Earth opposite the Sun. But when it left L2 last April, Western observers suspected the spacecraft was heading deeper interplanetary space. It didn’t take long to realize that Chang’e 2 was bound for Toutatis.

This is an example of a very smart re-use of a space probe.

By the way, the first fly-by of another planet took place fifty years ago this week.

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The Obama administration has approved a deal between Space Systems/Loral and a Chinese satellite company, even though this is the same company that leaked crucial satellite technology to China in the past.

10:01 am

Here we go again: The Obama administration has approved a deal between Space Systems/Loral and a Chinese satellite company, even though this is the same company that leaked crucial satellite technology to China in the past.

Loral is the same company that gave big donations to Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party back in the 1990s, then got permission to make a launch deal with the Chinese. Shortly thereafter it was learned that the Chinese had obtained restricted and crucial military satellite technology from the arrangement.

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