Tag: China

China launches four remote-sensing satellites

China today successfully launched four new remote-sensing satellites, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, which use very toxic hypergoic fuels, crashed.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

110 SpaceX
50 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 128 to 76, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 110 to 94.

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Three Chinese astronauts return to Earth

Three Chinese astronauts safely landed in Mongolia today after completing a six month mission on China’s Tiangong-3 space station.

Ye Guangfu, on his second flight, and two rookies, Li Cong and Li Guansu, lifted off on April 25, 2024 at 8:59 am EDT and docked about six-and-a-half hours later. They’ve been aboard the past six months conducting scientific experiments and performing maintenance activities including a space walk.

They landed today, November 3, at 12:24 pm EST at the Dongfeng landing site in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. China is 13 hours ahead of EST, so it was a nighttime landing there at 1:34 am November 4. China’s CGTN television network provided live coverage. Descent and touchdown were captured by infrared cameras.

A new crew has taken over occupancy of Tiangong-3, and has now started its own six month mission.

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China launches new crew to its space station

China today successfully launched a new three-person crew to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 2F rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s side boosters or lower stages, using toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed inside China. The crew will dock with the station mid-day tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

105 SpaceX
49 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 122 to 72, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 105 to 89.

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China launches three radar satellites

China today successfully launched three radar satellites, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.

The news report from China’s English state-run press made believe this launch was only one satellite, in contrast to its Chinese language press. It also did not provide information on where the rocket’s first stage crashed within China, nor whether any upgrades have been done to the Long March 6’s upper stage to prevent it from breaking apart and scattering low Earth orbit with space junk, as has now happened four times previously.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

102 SpaceX
48 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 119 to 71, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 102 to 88.

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China launches “Earth observation satellite”

China today successfully launched what its state-run press described as an “Earth observation satellite,” its Long March 4C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s first stage, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. As for the satellite, it was described as something to “be used in a variety of fields including land surveys, urban planning, road network design, crop yield estimation and disaster relief.”

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

100 SpaceX
47 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 117 to 70, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 100 to 87.

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China launches “satellite group” using Long March 6A rocket

According to China’s state run press, it today successfully launched what it simply describes as “a new satellite group,” its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.

This tweet appears to show video of the launch, though once again there is little information.

First, we have no idea where the rocket’s lower stage and four strap-on stide boosters crashed inside China, doing so at night when no one can see them coming down. Second, we have no idea whether China has made any upgrades to the Long March 6A upper stage, which on four previous launches has broken apart and scattered space junk after deploying its payload in orbit.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

100 SpaceX
46 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 117 to 69, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 100 to 86.

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China releases its planned space science program through 2050

China’s state run press today announced the release of a planned space science program covering all Chinese space missions through 2050 and put together by several government agencies.

The program, the first of its kind at the national level, was jointly released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the China National Space Administration and the China Manned Space Agency at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office.

The program outlines the development goals of China’s space science, including 17 priority areas under five key scientific themes, as well as a three-phase roadmap. The five key scientific themes include the extreme universe, space-time ripples, panoramic view of Sun-Earth, habitable planets, and biological and physical sciences in space, Ding Chibiao, vice president of the CAS, said at the press conference.

The article describes the program as having three phases. The first phase goes until 2027 and will focus on both the operation of China’s Tiangong-3 space station as well as the initial establishment of its lunar base. The second phase, from ’28 to ’35, will focus mostly on completing that lunar base, though other space science missions will fly as well. The third phase, from ’35 to ’50, lists 30 space science missions, though this is so far in the future it should treated merely as a rough premlinary proposal for the future.

This proposal continues the overall rational long term approach of China’s space-related government agencies. However, much of it will depend on China’s overall economy in the long term. I am reminded of similar long term plans put forth by Russia early in the last decade, all of which came to nothing because of economic and political factors (largely but not entirely related to Russia shooting itself in the foot with its two invasions of the Ukraine in 2014 and 2022). Similar events could do the same to China, especially as its program is not truly competitive but run from the top, a method that never works that well when one is trying to develop cutting edge technology.

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China launches what it claims is “high-orbit internet services satellite”

China today successfully launched what its state-run press claimed was “high-orbit internet services satellite,” its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages and strap-on boosters crashed inside China. All use toxic hypergolic fuels.

As for the payload, this tweet from a independent reporter on China’s space program questions the claim that it is a communications satellite. Since China has told us nothing, we really know nothing. However, if it was really what its state-run press says it is, China would normally release a bit more information.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

96 SpaceX
45 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 113 to 68, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 96 to 85.

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More details revealed of computer hacking of Japan’s space agency last year

According to a news article yesterday, the hacking of the computer systems of Japan’s space agency JAXA last year was far more extensive than first revealed, involving multiple attacks that obtained a great deal of data from many third parties, both governmental and commercial, and included the takeover of the accounts of five of JAXA’s nine-member board.

In the first attack, hackers stole the personal data of about 5,000 employees of JAXA and its related companies—nearly everyone with personal data on the computer network at the time. A JAXA investigation found that hackers took over accounts of about 200 of those individuals, including many senior JAXA officials, and gained unauthorized access to information, the sources said. The 200 hijacked accounts included those of about five directors on the nine-member board at the time, including President Hiroshi Yamakawa, the sources said. Hackers apparently targeted the accounts of directors and other senior officials who are authorized to access information on JAXA’s negotiations with outside parties, the sources said.

…According to the in-house investigation, Microsoft Corp.’s cloud service Microsoft 365 was compromised in the June 2023 cyberattack. More than 10,000 files of information stored on Microsoft 365 could have been leaked, the sources said. Of those, more than 1,000 files were provided by outside parties, including more than 40 companies and organizations with which JAXA had concluded non-disclosure agreements. Thse 40-plus entities include NASA, the European Space Agency, Toyota Motor Corp., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and the Defense Agency.

The source of the attacks was not indicated, but based on past hacks both of JPL and JAXA, China is the prime suspect. That country has routinely worked to steal technology from others. We should therefore not be surprised if Chinese space designs continue to resemble western concepts, down to the smallest nails.

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China unveils proposed spacesuit for its planned manned lunar landings

China's proposed moonsuit
Click for original image.

China’s Manned Space Agency (CMSA) yesterday unveiled its proposed spacesuit for the planned manned lunar landings it hopes to achieve by 2030.

As shown on the left, the suit draws its design from the Russian Orlan suit. The large backpack-like unit is also a hatch. The astronaut opens it, drops into the suit, and then a partner closes the unit, locking it shut. The rest of the suit is a single piece, with the central body unit rigid and the arms and legs flexible.

The Russian’s Orlan suit has been upgraded a number of times over the years, but the basic design has proved to be practical, efficient, and reliable, generally the oppose of the unwieldy and complex American suits NASA has been using since the start of the shuttle era.

The announcement was made to initiate a contest for the public to pick a name for the suit. Like all such contests, the real goal is to provide bread-and-circuses to the public so that they can think they have some say in what is happening. In the end the government will pick the name, and find someone who made the same suggestion to “award” for the idea.

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SpaceX launches two astronauts to ISS, setting new annual launch record for the U.S.

SpaceX this morning launched two astronauts to ISS in the fourth flight of the Freedom Dragon capsule, the Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its second flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. Freedom will dock with ISS tomorrow.

While most news stories will focus on the rescue aspect of this mission, its crew reduced by two so that the two astronauts launched in June on Boeing’s Starliner capsule can come home on it in February, the real news story is that with this launch the United States set a new record for the number of launches in a single year. With this launch the U.S. has completed 111 successful launches in 2024, exceeding the record set last year’s of 110 launches. And this record was achieved in less than three quarters of the year. At this rate is it very likely the U.S. will double the record of 70 set in 1966 that lasted until 2022.

China meanwhile completed its own launch late yesterday, its Long March 2D rocket placing what China’s state-run press described as “its first reusable and returnable test satellite,” designed to do orbital operations and experiments, return to Earth with those materials, and then later relaunch again. This is very similar to the commercial capsules that the startup Varda is flying and using to produce pharmaceuticals for sale.

The rocket lifted off from China’s Jiquan spaceport in northwest China. No word where its lower stages, using toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

95 SpaceX
44 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 111 to 67, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 95 to 83.

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Amateur gets new image of China’s X-37B copy in orbit

An amateur astronomer, Felix Schöfbänker, has released a new picture he took of China’s X-37B-type reusuable mini-shuttle while it was in orbit and prior to its landing on September 6, 2024.

The picture is low resolution and not very pretty, but it does appear to show that the mini-shuttle has a delta wing design.

While the recent space plane flight was underway, space watcher veteran Felix Schöfbänker in Upper Austria took imagery of the craft. In a recent posting, Schöfbänker reported he has imagery taken Aug. 10 of the Chinese space plane which shows a delta-wing design, captured when the craft turned 180 degrees since an earlier observation he made on July 30.

Schöfbänker also theorizes that the dark area between the wings could be the mini-shuttle’s cargo bay.

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China launches five satellites

China today successfully launched five satellites, its Kinetica-1 rocket (Lijian-1 in Chinese) lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

China’s state-run press generally attempts to describe this rocket as commercial and built by one of its pseudo-companies, but in this case that is even more dishonest. CAS Space was created from a government space division as a separate subsidiary, and thus is wholly controlled, funded, and owned by that agency. Unlike China’s other pseudo-companies, it didn’t even bother to go through the dance of raising investment capital or winning contracts.

Nonetheless, company officials now boast — after this fourth launch of this rocket — they are about to begin launching monthly. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

Meanwhile, China also today publicly announced a successful ICBM test launch into the Pacific, the first time it has made such an test or public announcement in four decades. It released almost no details, however, including where the missile was launched or where it splashed down.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

94 SpaceX
43 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 110 to 65, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 94 to 81.

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China launches eight satellites from offshore barge

China's spaceports

China today successfully launched eight satellites, its Smart Dragon-3 rocket lifting off from an offshore barge off the northeast coast of China.

The reports from China’s state-run press provided no information on the satellites themselves. The rocket has four stages that are all solid-fueled. This was its fourth launch from the off-shore barge. It was also thirteenth total offshore launch for China, involving four different rockets.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

93 SpaceX
42 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 109 to 64, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 80.

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Chinese pseudo-company almost succeeds in vertically landing test rocket

The Chinese pseudo-company Deep Blue Aerospace this weekend almost succeeded in vertically landing a grasshopper-type test rocket, its engines cutting off just before landing so that when the rocket hit the ground the impact was too much for its landing legs.

I have embedded video of the flight and crash landing below. The footage has a AI feel to it, for several reasons. First the camera is a fisheye lens, creating distortion. Second, this test grasshopper-type rocket is quite small, much smaller than the company wants you to realize, thus allowing the drone to fly around during its flight it in a somewhat spectacular manner.

The company stated that the test completed 10 of 11 engineering goals. It will have to rebuild a new test lander however to achieve that last and most important goal, landing without damage to allow immediate reflight. Regardless, this test means that China is finally getting close to achieving rocket reusablity, something it promised in 2018 it would achieve by 2020.

Note also that though this pseudo-company will likely not release its data to the other Chinese pseudo-companies, if China’s government wants to expropriate it for its own government rockets it will do so, and in fact likely has.
» Read more

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China and Rocket Lab complete launches

Yesterday there were two more launches. First China’s Long March 2D rocket in the very early morning hours lifted off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northern China, placing six satellites in orbit.

The satellites are part of a constellation for doing high resolution Earth observations. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed inside China.

Next Rocket Lab successfully launched five satellites for the French satellite company Kinéis. This was the second of five planned launches by Rocket Lab to put the entire 25 satellite internet-of-things constellation into orbit. It was also the second attempt to launch, with the first experiencing a launch abort at T-0 seconds due to a ground-system issue.

The launch pace is beginning to heat up. There were four launches yesterday, two from China, one from SpaceX and one from Rocket Lab. The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

93 SpaceX
41 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 109 to 63, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 79.

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China’s solid-fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket launches four satellites

China this afternoon launched four satellites using its solid-fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket, lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

It is unclear what the satellites purpose are, though there are hints they are part of a constellation providing communications for the internet of things. No word was also released where the rocket’s lower stages crashed in China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

93 SpaceX
40 China
11 Russia
10 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 108 to 62, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 77.

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China launches two GPS-type satellites

China today successfully launched two more BeiDou satellites for its GPS-type navigation constellation, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

No word on where the strap-on boosters and lower stages crashed in China, all using toxic hypergolic fuels.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

92 SpaceX
39 China
11 Russia
10 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 107 to 61, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 92 to 76.

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Hurricane damages China’s new launch facilities at its coastal Wenchang spaceport

China's spaceports

When Typhoon Yagi (what hurricanes are called in the Asian Pacific) made landfall on September 6, 2024, carrying winds as high as 150 miles per hour, it not only caused flooding and power outages, it apparently did significant damage to China’s new launch facilities at its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

The site has two launch towers, one dedicated to servicing the state’s Long March 8 rockets, while the other services both public and private rockets, including a Long March 12 that was due to make its debut launch later this year.

On Saturday, the city’s deputy mayor, Wei Bo, said the typhoon had posed a “serious threat” to facilities and equipment at the commercial space hub but emergency restoration work was being carried out.

As is usual with China’s state-run press, few details were released, including the actual damages, both to the launch facilities and to the nearby cities.

China has been using this spaceport increasingly to support its space station as well as launch planetary probes. It has also developed a commercial launchsite there for its pseudo-private companies to use. How this damage will impact future launches remains unknown.

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China lands its X-37B copycat reusable mini-shuttle

China’s state-run press today announced in a short statement that its X-37B copycat reusable mini-shuttle has landed after a 268 day mission.

This was the spacecraft’s third mission since 2020, with the second lasting 276 days and the first two days. All three missions have involved the release of secondary objects, with the last two flights including additional rendezvous maneuvers with one object. It is not clear if that object on this third flight was ever redocked or grabbed by the mini-shuttle for return to Earth. Such a recapture is thought to have occurred on the second flight.

Very little information about these flights has been released by China.

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China launches third batch of 10 satellites for proposed Starlink copycat constellation

China early this morning launched the third group of ten satellites for a proposed low-Earth-orbit internet constellation of nearly 6,000 satellites, proposed and built by a Chinese pseudo-company Geespace.

The company was created in 2018 and is backed by the Chinese automaker Geely. The Long March 6 rocket lifted off from China’s Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

88 SpaceX
38 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 103 to 57, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 88 to 72.

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China significantly expands its international partners for its planetary program

According to China’s state-run press, it has recently signed cooperative agreements with a significant number of new nations for either its International Lunar Research Station project (ILRS) or other deep space planetary missions.

During the opening ceremony of a two-day space conference held in Tunxi, east China’s Anhui Province on Thursday, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and its counterpart in Senegal signed an agreement on International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) cooperation.

At the conference, China’s Deep Space Exploration Lab (DSEL) inked memoranda of understanding with 10 institutions from countries including Serbia, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Panama and South Africa. Also among the institutions are the Belt and Road Alliance for Science & Technology, the Foundation for Space Development Africa, and Africa Business Alliance.

Senegal is now the thirteenth nation to join China’s lunar base project, following Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. That partnership also includes about eleven academic or governmental bureaucracies.

The agreements involving China’s deep space exploration involve other missions to other planets, with those nations either providing science instruments or some other contribution. That Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates have signed deals suggests there is a rising desire in the west to team up with China because of its general success in space, compared to the problems other nations often experience when dealing with NASA and the U.S. If so, the competition will certainly heat up in the coming years. I hope in this competition that American private enterprise can make up for the failures of our government.

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China targets 2028 for its own Mars sample return mission

According to a report today in China’s state-run press, it now hopes to launch its own Mars sample return mission in 2028, dubbed Tianwen-3.

The report is very vague about the missions design. It notes that it will involve two launches, including “key technologies such as collecting samples on the Martian surface, taking off from the Red Planet, [and] rendezvous on the orbit around Mars.”

Based on China’s overall track record for its planetary program, it is likely that the launch will likely take place somewhat close to this schedule, though a delay of one or two years would not be unreasonable. If so, we are looking at either two or three different projects to bring Mars samples back to Earth at almost the same time.

The first is the NASA/ESA joint Mars sample return mission, which is presently far behind schedule with large cost overruns, all because the mission design has been haphazard and confusing. At the moment it involves an American lander, a European orbiter and return capsule, a Mars launch rocket to be built by Lockheed Martin, and at least one Mars helicopter. None of this however is certain, as NASA is right now asking industry for suggestions for redesigning the mission. It is presently hoping to bring its samples back sometime in the 2030s.

The second is this China mission, which appears to have some of the same planned components, which is not surprising considering China’s habit of copying or stealing other people’s ideas.

A third sample return mission might also be flown, by SpaceX using its Starship spaceship and Superheavy rocket. Both are built with Mars missions specifically in mind. SpaceX has also ready done work locating a preliminary landing zone. If so, it could possible attempt this mission at about the same time, independent of both China or NASA.

Or it might simply offer Starship as part of the redesigned NASA sample return mission. There is also the chance SpaceX would do both.

If I had to bet, I would say SpaceX (on its own) is the most likely to do this first, with China second. If SpaceX teams up with NASA then it will be a close race between NASA and China.

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Russia claims its next unmanned Moon mission, Luna-26, is on schedule

Phase I of China/Russian Lunar base roadmap
The original phase I plan of Chinese-Russian lunar
base plan, from June 2021.

According to Russia’s state-run press, its next unmanned Moon mission, Luna-26, is on schedule for a planned launch in 2027, though that press also claims the launch may happen in 2026 instead.

The problem with this claim is that Russia had for years said that this lunar orbiter would launch by 2025. As expected, the mission has not launched on time, as have all of Russia’s 21st century lunar exploration plans. For example, the previous lunar mission, the Luna-25 lunar lander, was originally supposed to land on the Moon in 2021, was not launched until 2023, and ended up crashing on the Moon when the spacecraft did not function properly during a engine burn in lunar orbit.

In the first phase of the so-called China-Russian partnership to explore the Moon, is shown by the 2021 graph to the right, China continues to do all the heavy lifting, and do so pretty much on the schedule predicted. Russian meanwhile continues to do what I predicted back in 2021, get nothing done on time and when launched have problems.

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China launches “remote-sensing satellites” test satellites

China today successfully placed a classified “group” of “remote-sensing satellites” into orbit to test “new technologies of low-orbit constellations,” its Long March 4B lifting off from the Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

That is all the information that China’s state-run press released. No word was released as to where
in China the lower stages crashed. As to the number of satellites launched, according to this independent site, the launch had nine payloads, which suggests but does not confirm nine satellites.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

86 SpaceX
37 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 101 to 55, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 86 to 70.

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Chinese pseudo-company launches six satellites from off-shore barge

The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today completed a launch of six satellites, its Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from a barge off the coast of northeast China.

China’s state-run press once again illustrated how fake these pseudo companies are, in that it made no mention of the company in its official report, stating simply that the launch was completed by “China.” The companies might raise investment capital funds and sign contracts and make profits, but in the end they only do what they are told to do by the Chinese communists, and at any point those communists can confiscate the company for the government’s own purposes.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

84 SpaceX
36 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 99 to 54, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 84 to 69.

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Chinese scientists find method to extract water from Chang’e-5 lunar samples

Proposed concept for extracting water from lunar regoilth
Proposed concept for extracting water from
lunar regoilth

Chinese scientists have found that by heating Chang’e-5 lunar samples to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit it is possible to extract a significant amount of water. From the paper’s abstract:

FeO and Fe2O3 are lunar minerals containing Fe oxides. Hydrogen (H) retained in lunar minerals from the solar wind can be used to produce water. The results of this study reveal that 51–76 mg of H2O can be generated from 1 g of LR [lunar regolith] after melting at temperatures above 1200 K. This amount is ∼10,000 times the naturally occurring hydroxyl (OH) and H2O on the Moon. … Our findings suggest that the hydrogen retained in LR is a significant resource for obtaining H2O on the Moon, which are helpful for establishing scientific research station on the Moon.

A video in Chinese (hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay) that describes this research can be found here. (If any of my readers understands Chinese and can provide a translation of this video’s narration, I would be very grateful.) It includes an artist’s rendering (screen capture to the right) showing how such a system on the Moon could work to extract water from the soil. Sunlight would be focused by a lensed mirror into a glass-domed container, heating the ground. The water would evaporate, condense on the glass and be sucked into a tube that would transfer it to a water tank.

This design is of course very simple and preliminary. According to Jay, “They need to heat the soil to 1000℃ (1832°F) to get the iron oxide in the lunar soil to split, the oxygen combines with hydrogen to make water and iron (melting point of iron is about 1500℃). You will need a nuclear reactor to produce that much power for an inductive furnace to get that hot. Doing the calculation, it would take about 245kw to heat up a metric ton of dirt in one hour to a 1000℃ degrees. It could be done slower over 24 hours at 10kw.”

Despite the technical difficulties getting such equipment operational on the Moon, that this research suggests water can be produced practically anywhere on the lunar surface is signficant. It suggests that even if no easily accessible water ice is found in the permanently shadowed craters at the poles, lunar bases still have viable options for obtaining water, and they don’t have even be at the poles.

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China launches communications satellite

China today successfully launched a new communications satellite, its Long March 7A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

A short clip showing the launch can be found here. (Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.)

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

83 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 98 to 53, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 83 to 68.

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China launches new set of classified remote-sensing satellites

China today launched a new set of classified remote-sensing satellites supposedly designed to test “new technologies of low-orbit constellations, using its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

Almost no information was released about the satellites. Nor did China’s state-run press reveal where the rocket’s lower stages, carrying toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed within China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

81 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 96 to 52, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 81 to 67.

These numbers will likely change in only a few hours, as SpaceX has another launch today, scheduled for 11:20 am (Pacific).

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Chinese Long March 6A upper stage breaks up into debris shortly after deploying satellites

Ground and satellite reconnaissance data now indicates that the upper stage of the Chinese Long March 6A rocket that on August 6 launched the 18 satellites in a proposed Chinese 14,000 satellite internet constellation broke up into numerous pieces shortly after deploying the satellites.

The detection was made by the company Slingshot Aerospace, which tracks orbital spacecraft looking for the appearance of this kind of space junk.

This is actually the second time recently that an upper stage of a Long March 6A has broken up shortly after launch. In December 2022 the same thing was detected following a November launch.

All told, this relatively new Chinese rocket has launched seven times, and has had its upper stage break up twice. Apparently, China not only doesn’t care if the lower stages of its many rockets crash on top of its own citizens, it is quite okay with littering near-earth orbital space with debris. It needs to fix the upper stage of this rocket now, so such break-ups no longer occur.

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