Tag: China

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

8:51 am

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

10:34 am

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

9:56 am

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

9:09 am

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

8:51 am

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

9:12 am

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

12:04 pm

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

11:33 am

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

9:06 am

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

9:37 am

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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China launches first 18 satellites in a new Starlink-type internet constellation

11:52 pm

China today launched the first 18 satellites in a new Starlink-type internet constellation dubbed Spacesail, its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from the Taiyuan spaceport in north China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stage and four strap-on boosters landed within China. Jay notes that this Chinese constellation is now ahead of Blue Origin’s Kuiper constellation, a pattern that sadly has been repeated over and over again.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

77 SpaceX
33 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 91 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 77 to 63.

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Chinese scientists discover thin-layered graphene in Chang’e-5 lunar samples

9:47 am

Chinese scientists analyzing one of the lunar samples brought back in 2021 by Chang’e-5 from the Moon’s near side have detected for the first time what they call “natural few-layered graphene.”

You can read the paper here. The samples from Chang’e-5 came from some of what are believed are some of the youngest lava on the Moon. This discovery confirms that conclusion. From the paper:

The identification of graphene in the core–shell structure suggests a bottom-up synthesis process rather than exfoliation, which generally involves a high-temperature catalytic reaction. Therefore, a formation mechanism of few-layer graphene and graphitic carbon is proposed here.

Volcanic eruption, a typical high-temperature process, occurred on the Moon. Lunar soil can be stirred up by solar wind and high-temperature plasma discharge can be generated on the Moon’s surface. … [T]he Fe-bearing mineral particles, such as olivine and pyroxene, in lunar soil might catalyse the conversion of carbon-containing gas molecules in the solar wind or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into graphitic carbon of different thicknesses and morphologies on their surfaces, including few-layer graphene flakes and carbon shells.

These graphene flakes are likely to disappear over time, so its existence reinforces the belief that this lava is young.

Unlike too many American planetary scientists recently — who have repeatedly implied that finding anything even remotely related to life processes suggests the possibility of life on Venus and Mars — the Chinese scientists don’t make the additional absurd claim that finding carbon on the Moon suggests the existence of life. It doesn’t. Kudos to them for being good scientists.

As a result, expect American mainstream media to pay no attention to this result, despite its intriguing and unprecedented nature.

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China launches “high-orbit internet satellite”

8:45 am

China last night successfully launched what its state-run press merely labels as a “high-orbit internet satellite”, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichange spaceport in southwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stage and strap-on boosters, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. Previous launches have had those booster crash near habitable area.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

75 SpaceX
32 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 88 to 48, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 75 to 61.

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China scientists propose both a communications and GPS-type infrastructure on the Moon

9:34 am

In line with the remarkably rational and long term plans China has developed for exploring the solar system, Chinese scientists have proposed the country develop both a communications and GPS-type infrastructure on the Moon, with both including constellations of satellites in orbit as well as facilities on the ground.

A first phase would establish satellites in elliptical frozen orbits around the moon. A second phase would see further … satellites and spacecraft at Earth-moon Lagrange points 1, 2, 4 and 5, a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), and a spacecraft in geostationary orbit, termed a cislunar space station.

A third and final phase would add satellites in existing and new distant retrograde orbits (DRO), forming a near-moon space and extended space constellations. The system also includes comprehensive ground-based facilities.

While this plan is simply a proposal, it fits with China’s overall strategies for lunar exploration, all of which are designed carefully so that they can be scaled up for more complex operations there as well as elsewhere in the solar system. And based on China’s track record in space in the past decade, we should be entirely confident this program or some variation will be built.

That is, unless China undergoes a major economic collapse and a change in leadership that has different priorities.

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Scientists find hydrogen molecules in Chang’e-5 lunar samples

9:18 am

According to China’s state-run press, scientists analyzing the lunar samples brought back by its Chang’e-5 lander have detected extensive “hydrated” molecules in Moon’s regolith.

The mineral’s structure and composition bear a striking resemblance to a mineral found near volcanoes on Earth. At the same time, terrestrial contamination or rocket exhaust has been ruled out as the origin of this hydrate, according to the study.

The Chinese article keeps referring to these molecules as a form of “water molecules” but that is dead wrong. These are mineral molecules that simply have hydrogen as a component. There is no water here.

The discovery suggests that the detection of hydrogen on the surface of the Moon, both in the permanently-shadowed craters at the poles as well as lower latitudes, might not be water at all, but hydrated minerals. If so, the Moon is going to be a much more difficult place to establish colonies or even research bases, as getting water (and hydrogen and oxygen) is going to require a much more difficult mining and processing effort.

For several years the data has increasingly pointed in this direction. And for several years I have noticed a strong unwillingness of scientists and the press to recognize the trend (as illustrated by the above article’s false insistence that these are water molecules). Water ice has not been ruled out yet in the permanently-shadowed craters at the poles, but the evidence is mounting against it.

I suspect this reluctance is fueled by a desire to not say anything that might discourage exploration of the Moon, and the possibility of water there has been the main driver for all the recent lunar exploration programs. I can’t play that game. As much as I want humanity to explore the Moon and the solar system, we mustn’t do it based on lies. The facts need to be reported coldly.

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China launches earth observation satellite

9:50 am

China today successfully launched an earth observation satellite, its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from Taiyuan spaceport in the north of China. Video clips of the launch can be seen here.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

71 SpaceX
31 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 83 to 47, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 71 to 59.

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China planning an asteroid collision mission similar to DART

10:12 am

It appears China is putting together an asteroid collision mission similar to NASA 2022 DART mission that impacted the asteroid Dimorphus.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) mission may have already selected its target — the near-Earth object (NEO) 2015 XF261, a nearly 100-foot-wide (30 meters) asteroid.

According to the small-body database managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 2015 XF261 last came relatively close to Earth just this week, on Tuesday (July 9), when it passed within 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) of our planet. The space rock was traveling at around 26,000 mph (42,000 kph), roughly 30 times faster than the speed of sound.

Much of the information about this proposed comes from a very detailed a Planetary Society report, which said that the mission is targeting a 2027 launch and described the mission as follows:

The plan is for the observer spacecraft to reach the target asteroid first and conduct three to six months of close and orbiting observations to study the asteroid’s size, shape, composition, and orbit. Then the impactor spacecraft will perform a high-speed kinetic energy impact test with the target asteroid. The observer will monitor the entire impact process and evaluate the aftermath for 6-12 months to ascertain the effects.

As with DART, the claim is that this mission is primarily focused on planetary defense (learning how to prevent asteroid impacts of Earth). That claim however is bogus. While that component of the mission exists, it is not the primary purpose, which is to study asteroids themselves.

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Launch failure for Chinese pseudo-company Ispace

9:57 am

Based on a very terse report in China’s state-run press today, there was a launch failure today for one of China’s pseudo-companies, launched from the Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

Further research suggests the failure was on Ispace’s Hyperbola-1 solid-fueled rocket. If so, this would be that rocket’s fourth failure out of seven launches.

No other information about the failure has so far been released.

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Kazakhstan joins China’s lunar base project

9:03 am

Kazakhstan today became the twelth nation to join China’s International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, and the first besides Russia with a real viable space industry.

The agreement appears to also include language allowing both nations to use each other’s spaceports. Since Kazakhstan’s main area of participation in space is its Baikonur spaceport, built during the Soviet days and up to now used exclusively by the Russians, this agreement could be a big deal. As the article notes,

China is currently working to boost pad access for emerging commercial launch service providers. The Baikonur cosmodrome was set up by the Soviet Union in Kazakhstan. It is leased to Russia until 2050. The country also hosts the Sary Shagan Test Site. Kazakhstan shares a border with Xinjiang, in China’s west.

“Kazakhstan will need to diversify away from Russia if it wants to have a big future in space,” Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor specializing in space policy and military uses of outer space at the University of Leicester, told SpaceNews.

This deal indicates once again the foolishness of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. It highlighted to all of its neighbors that they need to form alliances with others to strengthen their hand should Russia turn its aggressive eye in their direction. Kazakhstan has now done so, to Russia’s long term detriment.

China’s twelve partner nations are Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. In addition, about eleven academic or governmental bureaucracies have signed on along with several other countries (Bahrain and Peru) who have not signed on but are involved in other ways.

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China launches “satellite group” of Earth observation satellites

8:50 am

According to China’s state-run press, a Long March 6A rocket today successfully launched a “group of satellites … for geographic mapping, land resource surveys, scientific experiments and other purposes,” lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.

No further information was provided, including where the rocket’s oxygen-fueled lower stages and its four solid-fueled strap-on boosters crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

70 SpaceX
30 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 82 to 45, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 70 to 57.

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Chinese first stage breaks free during static fire test; launches, crashes

10:08 am

The first stage of Chinese pseudo-company Space Pioneer’s new Tianlong-3 rocket, intended for its first launch this summer, crashed and burned today during a static fire test when the equipment holding it down failed.

Video of this spectacular failure is embedded below. The rocket is essentially a copy of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with that first stage designed to eventually become reusuable in the same way.

This pseudo-company recently announced it had raised $207 million in private investment capital, bringing the total it has raised to $552 million. It was also the first Chinese pseudo-company to launch an orbital rocket using liquid fuels, successfully doing so with its Tianlong-1 rocket in April 2023.

Though static fire engine tests have failed before, this appears to be the very first ever to actually break free and launch itself. Fortunately, according to both government and Space Pioneer officials, no one was hurt.

What impact this will have on China’s pseudo-private rocket industry is unknown. This incident isn’t the first, with a tank test by pseudo-company Landspace in January 2024 injuring three.

Moreover, there are hints that the Chinese government might be repossessing control from these companies (as I have expected from the start). Landspace, as well as two other pseudo-companies, Expace and Ispace, have been testing methane-fueled rockets, with Landspace having completed one orbital launch in December 2023 and all three successfully completing hop tests of their first stages.

Last week however a Chinese government agency successfully completed a 10-kilometer hop test of its own methane-fueled first stage. I wonder how much of its design was developed independently, or taken from these three pseudo-companies by the government. I suspect the latter, since none of these companies are really privately owned. They might seem so, but the communists can confiscate everything they have at any moment, and clearly supervises and dictates what they do, step-by-step.
» Read more

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SpaceX and China complete launches

9:44 am

Both SpaceX and China completed launches in the past 12 hours. First, SpaceX last night launched a package of National Reconnaissance Office reconnaissance satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The two fairings completed their seventh and thirteenth flights respectively.

Then, early today China launched a new communications satellite, its new Long March 7A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. Video of the liftoff can be seen here.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

69 SpaceX
29 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 80 to 43, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 69 to 54.

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China: Chang’e-6 collected more than four pounds of material from Moon

9:11 am

According to China’s state-run press today, its Chang’e-6 sample return mission collected 1,953.2 grams, more than four pounds, from the Aitkin Basin on the far side of the Moon.

Based on preliminary measurement, the Chang’e-6 mission collected 1,935.3 grams of lunar samples, according to the CNSA. “We have found that the samples brought back by Chang’e-6 were more viscous compared to previous samples, with the presence of clumps. These are observable characteristics,” Ge Ping, deputy director of the CNSA’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, who is also the spokesperson for the Chang’e-6 mission, told the press at the ceremony.

Researchers will then carry out the storage and processing of the lunar samples as planned and initiate scientific research work.

If all goes as plans, they will be ready to begin distributing samples for study to Chinese researchers in about six months.

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Chang’e-6 sample return capsule opened in China

10:27 am

According to China’s state-run press, the return capsule carrying samples from the far side of the Moon was opened yesterday “during a ceremony at the China Academy of Space Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation in Beijing.”

No other details were released. The pictures at the link appear to show engineers removing an internal capsule from inside the return capsule, which makes sense. For many scientific reasons the actual samples must be kept sealed from the Earth’s atmosphere in order to make sure they are not contaminated. The actual lunar material will not be exposed and touched until it is placed inside a very controlled environment.

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Chang’e-6 brings back the first lunar samples from Moon’s far side

9:10 am

Engineers inspecting and opening Chang'e-6 return capsule
Engineers inspecting and opening Chang’e-6’s
sample return capsule after landing today.
Click for original image.

According to China’s state-run press, the sample return capsule of its Chang’e-6 lunar mission successfully landed today in the inner Mongolia region of China, bringing back the first lunar samples from Moon’s far side.

Under ground control, the returner separated from the orbiter approximately 5,000 km above the South Atlantic. The capsule entered the Earth’s atmosphere at about 1:41 p.m. at an altitude of about 120 km and a speed of nearly 11.2 km per second. After aerodynamic deceleration, it skipped out of the atmosphere and then began to glide downwards, before re-entering the atmosphere and decelerating for a second time.
At around 10 km above the ground, a parachute opened, and the returner later landed precisely and smoothly in the predetermined area, where it was recovered by a search team.

The returner is set to be airlifted to Beijing for opening, and the lunar samples will be transferred to a team of scientists for subsequent storage, analysis and study, said the CNSA. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence is important. China has now successfully flown this atmospheric skip maneuver twice on returning from the Moon. Though both missions were unmanned, the technical knowledge gained from these flights is critical for their plans to send astronauts to the Moon in the next few years.

I have embedded China’s broadcast of the landing below. The sample capsule will now be carefully opened and the samples distributed first to Chinese scientists and later to China’s various partners in its lunar base project. The samples themselves came from a small mare region on the edge of Apollo Crater inside South Aitken Basin, one of the largest impact basins on the Moon. It is thus hoped that the samples were excavated from deep within the Moon during the impact, and will provide new data on the Moon’s make-up and history.
» Read more

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Are Chang’e-6’s lunar samples on the way back to Earth?

9:30 am

In Friday’s June 21, 2024 quick links, changes to lunar orbit of China’s Chang’e-6 sample return spacecraft were detected by ham operators. As I noted, “It isn’t clear whether this was the previous orbit adjustment, a new one, or the burn that would send the sample return capsule back to Earth.”

According to Space News today, the spacecraft with the samples is on its way back to Earth, based on additional information detected by amateurs. China however has released no information on the status of the spacecraft.

Upon return to Earth, the reentry capsule is expected to touch down at Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia during an half-an-hour long window opening at 1:41 a.m. Eastern (0541 UTC) June 25. The information is according to airspace closure notices. CNSA has not openly published timings of mission events in advance.

Earlier reports (which I can’t find now) had said the return was tentatively scheduled for June 25, 2024, so this Space News report makes sense. The lack of information from China is par for the course.

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China’s successfully completes full 10K hop of 3-engine launch test rocket

8:57 am

China’s yesterday successfully completed a 10K hop lasting six minutes of 3-engine launch test small-scale rocket, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

Developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, the carrier rocket features a 3.8-meter diameter rocket body, powered by three 70-tonne LOX/Methane engines and equipped with a full-size landing buffer system.

The rocket achieved vertical soft landing at a fixed point through take-off, ascent and variable-thrust descent. The test fully verified the rocket’s VTOL configuration, heavy-load landing buffer technology, reusable propulsion technology with high and strong variable thrust, and high-precision landing navigation and control technology.

I have embedded below a video that shows the take-off, parts of the flight, and landing. China hopes to fly a full scale orbital version, with a 4-meter diameter, in 2025.
» Read more

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China launches gamma-ray space telescope

9:50 am

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.

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Japan’s space agency reveals it was hacked in 2023

9:02 am

Japan’s space agency JAXA today revealed that beginning in 2023 and periodically into this year it has been attacked repeatedly by hackers, with data from more than 10,000 files stolen.

Attacks occurred in June 2023 and multiple times a year, although investigations are ongoing regarding whether more information was stolen in this year’s attacks.

In addition to internal data, potentially compromised entities include NASA, Toyota Motor Corp., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and the Defense Ministry, with which JAXA has nondisclosure agreements. Information from numerous aerospace and defense-related organizations and companies was also exposed.

JAXA stated that no sensitive information related to national security or rocket technologies was stolen in last year’s breach. Personal data of approximately 5,000 JAXA personnel and employees from partner companies was used to access the Microsoft 365 accounts of JAXA executives.

It appears JAXA officials only found out about the attack when police told them about it months after the June 2023 attack. Agency officials now say no sensitive rocket or satellite data was stolen. Instead, it appears the attack targeted personal communications as well as research facilities.

The report provided no indication about the source of these attacks, but noted that a 2016 attack is known to have come from China.

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter snaps picture of Chang’e-6 on far side of the Moon

10:23 am

Chang'e-6's landing site
Click for original image of Chang’e-6 on the Moon

The science team running Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have now released an image of China’s Chang’e-6 lander on far side of the Moon, taken on June 7, 2024 one week after the spacecraft touched down.

Chang’e 6 landed on 1 June, 2024, and when LRO passed over the landing site almost a week later, it acquired an image showing the Chang’e 6 lander on the rim of an eroded ~50 meter diameter crater.

The LROC team computed the landing site coordinates as 41.6385°S, 206.0148°E, at -5256 meters elevation relative to the average lunar surface, with an estimated horizontal accuracy of plus-or-minus 30 meters.

The overview map to the right, showing the entire far side of the Moon, shows that picture as the inset in the lower left, cropped to post here. The black and white dot in the center is Chang’e-6’s lander, with the surrounding brightened ground showing the blast area produced by the engines during touchdown.

According to the LRO press release, the large dark area that surrounds the lander — as seen in the wider inset in the upper right — is a “basaltic mare deposit” — similar to the vast dark frozen lava seas evident to our own eyes on the near side of the Moon.

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