China today launched three more military reconnaissance satellites with its Long March 2C rocket.
The race for the most launches in 2017 is tightening, with China coming up the rear.
17 Russia
16 SpaceX
13 China
The US itself has a comfortable lead with 27 total launches.
Early today China’s Long March 6 rocket successfully placed three commercial remote sensing satellites into orbit.
The Long March 6 is about comparable to Indian’s PSLV rocket, though slightly more powerful.
Capitalism in space: In response to the announcement by Chinese officials that they aim to reduce their launch costs in order to attract more commercial business, Indian officials announced that they plan to do the same in order to compete.
Interestingly, the reduced price that China revealed, $5,000 per kilogram, remains about twice that of SpaceX’s estimate per kilogram price for a launch using a reused first stage.
China’s Long March 4C rocket successfully placed two satellites in orbit today, a weather satellite and a commercial data relay satellite.
This was China’s 11th launch in 2017, well below the 20 they achieved in 2016, the drop caused by two launch failures earlier this year that resulted in an almost four month pause in launches.
At present the race for the most launches in 2017 stands as follows:
17 Russia
16 SpaceX
11 China
10 Arianespace (Europe)
7 ULA
5 Japan
4 India
3 Orbital ATK
Overall, the United States leads with 26 launches, its most since 2000.
The European Space Agency has taken the lead position in an international effort to track China’s falling Tiangong-1 test space station module.
The goal of the effort is to improve the accuracy of predicting the fall of such objects. Tiangong-1, at 8.5 tons, is big enough for some pieces to survive re-entry and crash to the ground. Improving the predictions of where it will fall will reduce the chances of the debris causing harm.
I first read of this effort from this news story, which contained in its last sentence one piece of interesting news having nothing to do with Tiangong-1:
The next such launch [of a Chinese space station module] will be of the Tianhe core module around 2019 on a new Long March 5B rocket, the country’s largest and most powerful so far. [emphasis mine]
It appears China has quietly renamed its big Long March 5 rocket, adding a “B” to the name. This name change strongly indicates what I have suspected for months, that the July launch failure has required China to significantly redesign the rocket. Apparently, the poor performance of the rocket’s first stage engines was caused by fundamental design problems.
China today successfully used its Long March 3B rocket to place two GPS satellites in orbit.
The launch had originally been scheduled for July, but was delayed when a Long March 3B launch in June failed to place its satellite in the correct orbit.
The new colonial movement: Though the details are vague, a Chinese official said earlier this week that they now expect to resume launches of their Long March 5 rocket in 2018.
The article says that the July launch failure of the second Long March 5 was due to “a manufacturing defect affecting one of two YF-77 engines powering the first stage. If officially confirmed, this would mean no major effects such as redesign are required, meaning a relatively swift return to flight.”
The long delay since July however suggests to me that the defect was more serious, and has either required that redesign or a complete recall of all YF-77 engines.
Capitalism in space: Chinese company has successful given a live turtle a high altitude balloon flight as prep for future tourism flights.
The news article is somewhat humorous in claiming the following:
Shenzhen-based Kuang-Chi Group said it blasted the yellow-headed turtle, nicknamed “Little Cloud”, to an altitude of 21,000 metres inside a helium-filled craft. The launch took place from western China’s Xinjiang region at about 4am on Wednesday morning.
The craft landed safely at about 8.28am the same day, and the turtle was said to have survived the trip.
The company said it was the first time a live animal had been safely taken into near space, and that the trip paved the way for it to sell commercial flights to humans by 2018 or 2019. [emphasis mine]
The company’s claim, highlighted above, is so incredibly not true it raises questions about their whole story. Humans have been taken by balloon to these elevations several times. This might be a poor translation, but then it indicates some incompetence by the reporter.
Either way, this company is aiming for the high altitude tourism market that World View in Tucson had initially been focusing on, but now seems to have abandoned.
Posted as we slog our way through Phoenix traffic.
In an interview earlier this week a Chinese official revealed that the problem during the July Long March 5 launch was related to an issue with “first-stage propulsion.”
The official only added that the investigation is “on-going” and that they intend to fix the problem because the Long March 5 is needed for China’s human and deep space programs.
The vagueness here suggests to me the possibility of some very fundamental problems that might be requiring a major redesign. That is a pure guess, however, and should not be taken very seriously.
The orbit of China’s first test space station, Tiangong-1, is quickly decaying and the station is shut down with no way to bring it down in a controlled manner.
The Chinese space station is accelerating its fall towards us and will reach the ground in the coming months, Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told the Guardian. It is decaying quickly and he expects “expect it will come down a few months from now – late 2017 or early 2018”, he told the paper.
The Tiangong 1 station was launched in 2011 as one of the great hopes of the Chinese ambitions in space, and as part of a plan to show itself off as a global superpower. The country’s space agency referred to the station as the “Heavenly Palace” and conducted a range of missions, some of which included astronauts.
But last year scientists at Chinese’s CNSA space agency said that they had lost control of the lab, and that it would now be heading towards Earth. That put an end to months of speculation, as experts watching the path of the station suggested that it had been behaving strangely.
As with many other similar objects coming down from orbit, the odds of any pieces hitting anyone is quite small. Still, China is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, and that makes them liable for any damage done by their spacecraft when they return to Earth.
Astronomers using China’s new FAST radio telescope have announced its first discoveries, the identification of two pulsars,
The new pulsars PSR J1859-01 and PSR J1931-02, also referred to as FAST pulsar #1 and #2 (FP1 and FP2), were detected on August 22 and 25, and were confirmed by the Parkes telescope in Australia on September 10. “FP1 is a pulsar with a spin period of 1.83 second and an estimated distance of 16 thousand light-years, and FP2, is a pulsar with a spin period of 0.59 second and an estimated distance of 4,100 light years,” said Li Di, Deputy Chief Engineer of FAST Project at the National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC), on Tuesday.
FAST’s gigantic size will allow it to pinpoint many similar astronomical objects previously beyond the resolution of radio telescopes.
Note that there is still no word on whether China has found a scientist to head FAST operations.
China today used its Long March 2D rocket to launch a Venezuelan government remote sensing research satellite.
This launch continues China’s recovery from its early summer launch failures.
China today ended a long pause in launches since the failure of its Long March 5 rocket in July and placed in orbit three military satellites using a smaller rocket not used since 2004.
The use of such a rocket is most intriguing. Meanwhile, no word yet on when launches will resume on their other more up-to-date rockets, including their new and most powerful Long March 5.
The new colonial movement: The Egyptian government today voted to create an Egyptian space agency with the goal of encouraging the development of a home-based satellite industry.
The ruling by the Council of Ministers will now pass on to the Egyptian parliament for final agreement and made into law. Minister Abdel Ghaffar also said that Egypt intends create a satellite manufacturing centre in 2019, and then launch Egypt’s first indigenously made satellite in 2020.
This satellite is now dubbed Misr Sat 2, previously known as EgyptSat-2, and will be designed and manufactured at Space City, located in New Cairo. Space City is a one hundred acre plot of land where satellite manufacturing and other space facilities are being built. Misr Sat-2 is to be partly funded by China to the tune of U.S.$45 million after a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and China’s President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit held in Xiamen, China, earlier in September 2017.
This project is linked to larger aid from China, and appears to be prompted by this Chinese aid.
The Chinese government has ordered that all businesses run by North Koreans, whether singly or in a joint partnership, must shut down within the next four months.
The order applies to all such businesses in China, as well as any Chinese/North Korean joint ventures abroad. It will exempt nonprofits and “noncommercial infrastructure projects,” whatever that is, and will also allow individual businesses to request a waiver.
The July launch failure of China’s largest rocket, Long March 5, is going to cause delays to both its lunar and space station programs.
They have not yet finished their investigation into the failure, and are now admitting that the launch of Chang’e-5, a lunar sample return mission, will not occur this year as planned, and that the launch of their space station core module will be delayed into 2019.
China has de-orbited its its first test unmanned freighter, Tianzhou-1, after completing three docking tests and three refueling tests with its Tiangong-2 space station module.
Tiangong-2 remains in orbit, with no clear indication for how long.
China’s central bank has ordered all Chinese banks to stop all business with North Korea.
Chinese banks have come under scrutiny for their role as a conduit for funds flowing to and from China’s increasingly isolated neighbor. The sources said banks were told to stop providing financial services to new North Korean customers and to wind down loans with existing customers, following tighter sanctions against Pyongyang by the United Nations. The sources said lenders were asked to fully implement United Nations sanctions against North Korea and were warned of the economic losses and reputational risks if they did not do so.
Chinese banks received the document on Monday, the sources said.
It appears that this order only effects new business with North Koreans, which means it can be gotten around, and is somewhat meaningless. At the same time, it appears that China’s is slowly stepping up its pressure on North Korea, which is a good thing.
China’s test cargo freighter Tianzhou-1 has completed its third refueling test on test space station module Tiangong-2, and has undocked for the last time.
Both will spend a bit more time in orbit, after which they will be deorbited to burn up in the atmosphere.
China’s Tianzhou-1 test cargo freighter successfully completed its third docking with the prototype test space station module Tiangong-2 today.
Commands for the rendezvous and docking were issued at 17:24 Beijing time, according to the China Manned Space Agency, with the new ‘fast’ process taking 6.5 hours to complete.
Previously the rendezvous and docking process took around two days, or 30 orbits. The breakthrough will be used to allow crewed Shenzhou craft to reach the future Chinese Space Station (CSS) much sooner after launch.
Tianzhou-1 will soon perform a third and final refuelling test with Tiangong-2, before the cargo spacecraft is carefully deorbited over the South Pacific.
No word yet on when China might resume launches however. Since the July launch failure of their largest rocket, Long March 5, the country has launched nothing. There have also been stories that suggest the planned December launch of their Chang’e 5 lunar mission will be delayed now until the spring.
